This week I still can't even with things. I'm just...numb to it all. So…I again just didn’t have time to record a new thing. Instead, I’m sharing the audio from a live video I did on my Facebook group page, Authors and Creators Making Money Selling Books.

This week I just can't even with things. My father died last Friday, and I'm at his funeral the day this goes live. So...I just didn't have time to record a new thing. Instead, I'm sharing the audio from a live video I did on my Facebook group page, Authors and Creators Making Money Selling Books.

One of the questions most often asked by customers is “what are you trying to say in your work?” and one of the most oft laid criticisms at the feet of artists is “it’s pretty, but it doesn’t have a point.” Both of these criticisms come back to a critical aspect in any art career, your point of view.

Point of view is more important than talent. I’ve seen the most technically proficient artwork in the world do nothing for audiences while a simple mixed media piece has brought them to tears due to its point of view.

Point of view is why you can tell Frank Miller’s work from Skottie Young’s, and Mike Mignola’s from Rob Liefeld’s. You might not like all of those artists, but you can tell their work apart from the pack the moment they put pen to paper. More importantly, their fans flock to their work because it speaks clearly to them.

In order to make great content, you need a strong point of view. You need a slant on the world. You need something that separates you from the rest of the creatives on the planet.

Let’s do a thought experiment. Think about Tim Burton for a moment. Now think of the kinds of projects that would be perfect for Tim Burton’s view of the world. Can you imagine a couple?

Of course you can. His distinct style has been developed in the public zeitgeist for decades.

That clarity of vision makes a good point of view. Tim Burton won’t be a good fit for 99.9% of movies, but point of view is not about that. Your goal is not to be on everybody’s list of candidates, it’s to be the number one candidate for the right person. Those projects you thought of, could you imagine anybody else directing them except for Tim Burton and doing as good a job? Probably not.

That is the power of a strong point of view. With a solid point of view, you don’t have to pitch yourself. Your ideal audience comes to you.

Point of view is the hardest part to nail down in a creative life because it takes life experience and practice to figure out. It’s why you need to make a lot of different things and finish them.

Once you’ve done a body of work, you can look back, think about your point of view, and figure out what it is you are trying to say. You can connect the dots much easier after completing several projects than you could before you began your work. Then, when you go to make a career, you can tell people exactly what you stand for and they can make a decision whether they want to stand with you or with somebody else.

If you don’t have a point of view, it’s a bit like making plain white socks. Nobody hates plain white socks and we all buy them, but we don’t care about what brand we buy. Most of us buy whatever’s cheapest. Every time we buy, we buy a different brand because we just don’t care about plain white socks. You don’t want to be plain white socks.

On the other hand, a point of view is like having the brightest, pinkest, dragoniest socks on the planet. They won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but those who love bright pink dragon socks will flip their lid and buy ten pairs. They’ll look through the designer’s collection and buy up all of their stuff. They’ll sign up to receive updates for when the new dragon socks come out. Nobody has ever signed up to find out when the next pair of plain white socks launches. That’s the power of a point of view.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a point of view yet. That’s normal when you first start out. The more you create the more connective thread you will find between your work, and the stronger your point of view will become. One of the reasons artists become more successful later in their career is because they’ve developed a strong point of view.

If you already have created a decent body of work, it’s time to look back on it and ask yourself, what am I trying to say here?

If you like free things, you can get the first chapter of Sell Your Soul: How to Build your Creative Career on Bookfunnel now at www.gosellyoursoul.com

Patrick Adams writes children’s books. More importantly, he helps others get their books ready for publication. It’s really hard to get the right format for books the first time, and in that Patrick is a master. Here’s a bio from www.patrickadamsbooks.com.

Patrick Adams was born to American parents in Beirut, Lebanon. His love of travel likely started on his first flight when he was four days old. He grew up in exotic locations like Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Las Palmas, the Canary Islands in his early formative years. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1993 with a degree in Travel and Tourism. His debut children's travel adventure, Lisa Goes to England, was released in May 2015. The story was inspired by his own children and especially his daughter Holly's vast imagination and love of her stuffed animals. England was the first of many travel adventures, followed by France and Australia. Each story will feature exploration, mischief, and magic in the most enchanting places around the world.

A new series debuted in February 2017, featuring his daughter, Rhythm, and the first book taught young children about the world of music. The second book, Rhythm's Fantastic Friends!, highlights special people in the life of a child, especially Rhythm. Rhythm has been battling a rare form of epilepsy called Infantile Spasms, and her books are dedicated to all children and families dealing with this insidious form of epilepsy.

As the owner of Patrick Adams Books, LLC, Patrick is dedicated not only to publishing his own books but helping other independent authors achieve their dream of seeing their books come to life and getting published. On a personal note, Patrick has traveled to 40 countries so far and counting. Combining his love of travel with the imagination and inspiration of his own children, he couldn't help but bring these children's adventure stories to life.

Joe Biel is the publisher of Microcosm Publishing, and he’s been doing this a long time. In February, he will celebrate his 22nd year in business as an indie publisher. He’s had a lot of success in his day, but I know him from the 1607 backers he accumulated on his recent Kickstarter for Unfuck Your Brain.

I wanted to talk to him about that, publishing and making your way as a creative. Here’s a bit about his company, Microcosm Publishing, from its site, https://microcosmpublishing.com:

Portland's most colorful, authentic, and empowering publishing house and distributor, Microcosm Publishing is a vertically integrated publishing house that equips readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and bookettes about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice. The then-distro and record label was started by Joe Biel in his bedroom in 1996 and is now among the oldest independent publishing houses in Portland, OR. Microcosm focuses on relating the experiences of what it's like to be a marginalized person. We constantly strive to be recognized for our spirit, creativity, and value. Our books are printed in the U.S. on post-consumer papers while we double the industry standard in our number of women authors.

Microcosm has lived in milk crates, in closets, in a mud room, in a windowless basement, in a church, and under a desk at a major credit card company. We've brought our brightly colored books to infoshops, zine fests, media summits, bicycle conferences, parks, street corners, house shows, dirty bars, all­night coffeeshops, art museums, and every corner of the mainstream where we can clear away a little space to set up shop. We set out to save ourselves from not caring, but out there in the margins we've found communities worth always doing it better for. Now we have contracts instead of handshakes, a warehouse instead of a fanny pack full of zines. We have a staff, we have relationships in the industry that send our books to places we wouldn't have dreamed we could walk into ourselves. We're not as drunk or dirty as we used to be. But still, at heart, we've got this milk crate strapped to the back of a bike and we're riding wildly across town to hand you the book that might just be the one that saves your life. We refuse to die. Get over it.

Microcosm is distributed worldwide by Legato / Perseus Books Group and by Turnaround in the UK.

If you like this episode, check out Microcosm on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Joe was also gracious enough to give his email. If you have questions about publisher hit him up, joe at microcosmpublishing dot com.

If you like this episode, head over to Twitter and find Matt @mattharrymh.

If you like free things, you can get the first chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build your Creative Career on Bookfunnel now at www.gosellyoursoul.com

This week I did a live presentation at Ontario California Comic Expo about how to build a rapid following. I talked about three mindsets holding people back right now, and the three secrets to building a rabid following. It’s been a while since I did a live presentation, and you know that the audio tends to be spotty with these things, but I hope you enjoy it.

If like free things, you can get the first chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build your Creative Career for free at www.gosellyoursoul.com.

Tara Massan and I have been friends for a couple years now. She is one of the first people ever to take me up on my free coaching calls, and a 30-minute call ended up lasting 2 hours as we gabbed forever. Recently, I checked out her site and was thrilled to see not only did she listen to my advice but she IMPLEMENTED it! Her site is awesome now. When I met her it was all sorts of lame and now it’s amazing! Check it out at: www.foreverbemoved.com.

Here’s her bio:

Tara Massan is a life coach and a writer who has been featured in The Huffington Post, Elite Daily, Tiny Buddha and The Wall Street Journal. She is the founder of Be Moved - a lifestyle company dedicated to helping others live their best life. Her primary focus is to help others create a healthier and happier life on their own terms.

If you like this episode, head over to Twitter and find Tara @taramassan

If like free things, you can get the first chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build your Creative Career for free at www.gosellyoursoul.com.

Matt Harry and I have been friends since almost the time I moved to Los Angeles. He wrote movies and I wanted to write TV. I watched his career as a writer turn into a career as a professor, and he watched me struggle to make a living as an author.

Then one day I got a message from him that he wanted to publish a book, and I won’t lie I squealed a little. Finally, after years, I could help Matt with something. We sat down and chatted. A few months later he had a publishing deal with Inkshares, which is an alternative to Kickstarter for books.

I wanted to have him on to talk about his experience, publishing, and just shoot the shit. I don’t get to talk with Matt enough, and it was good to catch up. Here’s his bio, straight from Matt.

Matt Harry has been writing since he was 10 years old. He spent his early years writing newspaper articles for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, one-act plays, and some very serious short stories before finally discovering filmmaking at Ohio University. He graduated cum laude and was awarded a Bachelor’s degree in Television Production. He then moved to Los Angeles, where he attended the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and received an MFA in Film Production. Since graduating from USC, Matt has worked as a reality TV writer, editor, director, and feature film producer. Projects include The Bachelor, Design on a Dime, Seriously Funny Kids, Rock the Reception, and Red Serpent.

As a writer, Matt’s screenplays have been recognized by the Austin Film Festival, the FOX/NYTVF Comedy Script Contest, the PAGE Awards, Script Pipeline, the Launchpad Manuscript Contest, and the Nicholl Fellowships. In 2006, Matt was awarded a screenwriting fellowship by the Writer’s Arc, a non-profit organization that searches for emerging talent. His first produced feature screenplay, Fugue, landed on several top-ten lists, won Best Horror Film at the Mississippi Film Festival, and was picked up for distribution by GoDigital. Matt has written also screenplays for the Flynn Picture Co., Primary Wave, Fishbowl Films, Co-op Entertainment, and director Todd Bellanca. His short film Super Kids, which he wrote and co-directed, has over 3.2 million views on YouTube. Recently, his animated TV pilot Monster Cops was awarded Grand Prize in the Second City Original Sitcom Contest, and is currently in development.

His debut novel Sorcery for Beginners has been described as “J.K. Rowling meets V.E. Schwab,” “an immersive and interactive adventure,” “amazing,” and “innovative in its telling.” It’s available for purchase on October 10 from Inkshares and wherever books are sold. The link to the Amazon page is here: https://tinyurl.com/y9apvs7y

If you like this episode, head over to Twitter and find Matt @mattharrymh.

If you like free things, you can get the first chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build your Creative Career on Bookfunnel now at www.gosellyoursoul.com

Desireé Duffy is a force to be reckoned with in the publishing world. Aside from being an author herself, she has 20+ years of experience as a publicist. I know most of us have no experience with publicity and PR, so I wanted to bring her on to clear up some of the most common misconceptions about building relationships with the press. Here’s her bio for you. You can find out more at www.blackchateauenterprises.com.

As the founder of Black Château Enterprises, Desireé Duffy has created a new way of promoting books and authors. Known as the Author Network, it offers the main components that independent and small press authors need—media interviews, articles about their books, book reviews, and social media buzz.

Focused on helping authors and creative individuals elevate their work, Black Château’s goal is simple: to give talented individuals and exceptional brands the exposure they deserve with flexible, creative strategies that deliver results.

Duffy is the chair for the Alliance of Women in Media’s Advisory Board and also writes for Equites.com as a contributor on marketing, digital media, technology and entrepreneurship. She lives in Southern California with her husband and two puggles—Spike and Teddy Bear.

Eva Hartmann (aka Jewel Quinlan) is a fiction editor and author with 15 romance books to her name. Romance authors are the most ruthless marketers in the game, and I wanted to have her on to talk about developing the proper mindset, building her brand, and developing her marketing chops.

I saw Eva speak at a LARA (Los Angeles Romance Authors) event a couple weeks ago, and she nailed it, talking about the advantage of using Instafreebie, Mailchimp, and Facebook ads together. She has two courses coming out next month through www.yourfictioneditor.com, but I couldn’t find a bio on that site, so here is one I found from her romance author site www.jewelquinlan.com:

Jewel Quinlan had an abundant imagination and strong desire to write novels since she was very young. She has a passion for writing paranormal and fantasy romance but often finds herself straying into new areas like contemporary and suspense because her imagination just won’t let up.

An avid traveler, she has visited fifteen countries so far (which she enjoys using as setting in her novels) and has plans to see more of the world. She has a particular fondness for Bavaria and studies the German language as one of her hobbies.

During the day, she work as a pharmaceutical sales representative and, at night, she writes romance. She currently lives in Orange County, California with her dog Penny. Jewel is kept in shape by Penny’s frequent demands for walks and squeak toy time.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn:

How to get your CPC down for Facebook ads

How to set goals and achieve them

How to get your mindset right for success

How to avoid overwhelm

How to use Mailchimp, Instafreebie, and Facebook ads together seamlessly

Andreea (A.G.) Billig is the founder of www.selfpublishingmastery.com, an author, and motivational speaker. I am part of her upcoming Self Publishing Mastery virtual summit and wanted to have her on the show to talk about it, her career, and how authors can master self-publishing.

She began writing short stories at the age of 8. Imagining plots and characters became her favorite pastime, leaving little time for playing with toys and dolls. Soon after, she started taking part in national literary contests and children magazines featured her creations. The grown-ups acknowledged her gifts, speaking on radio, TV and in print about the 13-year-old writer. They also awarded her with several first prizes in the most important national writing contest for young people in short story, reportage and drama categories.

At fifteen, A.G. finished her first novel, a book she may decide to publish someday. She also discovered that she could express her creativity as a journalist. She wrote articles and interviews for several newspapers and magazines, she was a TV host and a radio presenter. In addition, after gradutaing from University, she developed a career in communication, as a PR Consultant.

G. Billig’s first collection of short stories is called Four Doors and Other Stories. It’s been launched as en eBook in November 2012 by MP Publishing (U.K.). A revised Romanian version was released in paperback and digital by Datagrouppublishing house in June 2013. She chose to self – publish her first non-fiction book. “I Choose Love!” was realeased on the 20th of March, 2016, and became a best seller on Amazon in four different categories.

As the daughter of a French father and an Eastern European mother, A.G. is a natural born traveler. Her trips took her across Europe, to the Americas. It was during a spiritual journey to Brazil to the magical land of Abadiania, at the end of 2010, that she found out that writing is her life purpose.

When she is not imagining things, she enjoys dancing, doing sports (skiing, skating and kick box aerobics), taking long walks, reading, listening to the music and being outdoors. She shares her flat with the lovely Oona The Yorkie.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn:

What authors can do to get more visibility on their work

How to find your ideal readers

Why it’s important to know your readers

How librarians can be your best friend

Why word of mouth is the best marketing

Why crafting a 360-degree experience for your readers is important

If you liked this episode, make sure to check out A.G. Billig on Instagram @ag_billig. Also, make sure to check out her site at www.selfpublishingmastery.com.

If you want a free chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build a Creative Career, just click here.

If you haven’t joined our Facebook group to help you make more money selling books, click here.

Monica Leonelle is a force of nature. I heard about her before I ever booked her on the show, and then I kept hearing about her well after I booked her. She’s an author and speaker. She writes fiction and non-fiction books but is probably best known for her Growth Hacking for Storytellers series, one that I was told to buy over and over again in the past couple of months.

Monica Leonelle was born in Germany and spent her childhood jet-setting around the world with her American parents. Her travels include most of the United States and Europe, as well as Guam, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines.

She started publishing independently in 2009 and has since published over half a million words of fiction spread across four series, Socialpunk, Waters Dark and Deep, Emma + Elsie, and Stars and Shadows. In 2014, she published 8 books and one short story.

She writes about indie publishing at ProseOnFire.com. Her most recent non-fiction book, Write Better, Faster, has earned raving reviews from the independent publishing community for going deeper than anyone else into the topic of writing speed. She currently averages around 3,000 words per hour and writes 25,000+ words per week (most weeks).

Before becoming an independent author, Monica led digital marketing efforts at Inc. 100 companies like Hansen’s Natural and Braintree.

Monica is a lifetime member of Sigma Pi Sigma honor fraternity and was a 2007 Chicago Business Fellow, graduating with an MBA from the Chicago Booth School of Business at 25 years old. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a minor in Physics from Truman State University.

She’s been an avid blogger of marketing and business trends since 2007. Her ideas have been featured in AdAge, The Huffington Post, the AMEX OpenForum, GigaOm, Mashable, Social Media Today, and the Christian Science Monitor. In 2009, she was named one of the top 25 Tweeters in the city of Chicago by ChicagoNow, a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn:

How to get in alignment with your audience

How to win the CPC game

How to protect yourself from rising ad costs

How to build a value ladder

Why writing is marketing

And so much more.

If you liked this episode, please check out Monica’s new site www.theworldneedsyourbook.com. I’m so excited for the next chapter in Monica’s journey. You can also find her on all the usual platforms @monicaleonelle.

If you like this show, please rate, review, and subscribe to it on iTunes by clicking here.

And if you want to learn all about making more money as an artist, you can get the first chapter of my new book for free at www.gosellyoursoul.com.

BEN BISHOP is a comic creator from Maine. We’ve been friends online for a while but met for the first time in person at Emerald City Comic Con, where we did a signing together at this shop in Seattle.

I brought him on the show because his Kickstarter for Drawing Blood, with is written by David Avallone and Kevin Eastman (yes, that one) is blowing up Kickstarter as we speak (www.drawingbloodcomic.com) and I wanted to talk with him about that, his book The Aggregate, and how he’s made a living making comics. Here is his bio, straight from www.bishart.net.

Ben has wanted to make comics since he was four years old and wrote to Marvel, at age eleven, asking for a job. Finding out it was not only illegal to hire an eleven-year-old, but that his skills weren’t QUITE there yet, Ben went back to the drawing board and to Mr. Morley’s 5th-grade classroom.

Ben later moved to Portland, Maine, to attend the Maine College of Art. After one great year and some loans that didn't go through, he was forced to leave. Ben then realized that if he really wanted to MAKE COMICS, maybe he should just MAKE COMICS.

For the next four years, Ben worked at coffee shops and lobster shacks while writing and drawing his first graphic novel. In 2008 he released the 300 page, NATHAN THE CAVEMAN, which was soon followed by several other smaller works.

In 2011, Ben illustrated the award-winning LOST TRAIL, NINE DAYS ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS, the graphic novel retelling of Donn Fendler’s famous true story “LOST ON A MOUNTAIN IN MAINE.” LOST TRAIL led to illustration work for larger companies like Archaia, IDW, Darby Pop, Action Lab, Nickelodeon, and Hasbro. Ben also jumped at the opportunity to create comic cover art for some of his favorite characters like Batman, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and G.I.Joe.

After 7 straight years of commissions, work for hire, and freelance work, Ben was determined to get back to creating stories of his own. In 2015, he put together a KICKSTARTER campaign for his next big project, THE AGGREGATE. The book would be the first of a new kind of comic he’s calling, SPLIT DECISION COMICS. In this innovative new format, the reader makes decisions for the characters and ultimately dictates the direction of the narrative. With a goal of $10,000 which was hit in the first 24 hours, THE AGGREGATE book went on to raise 3 times that thanks to the demand and excitement of his friends, family, and fans.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn:

How to augment your Kickstarter to make sure you don’t run out of money.

How to start a fan club.

Why you don’t need a publisher.

How to go it alone and make comics even when every publisher tells you no.

How to finish projects

And much more.

If you liked this episode, make sure to check out Ben on Twitter and Instagram @bishart. Also, make sure to order his new comic on Kickstarter at www.drawingbloodcomic.com.

If you want a free chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build a Creative Career, just click here.

If you haven’t joined our Facebook group to help you make more money selling books, click here.

And don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you liked this episode.

Cory Huff is a marketing expert that specifically works with burgeoning artists and creative entrepreneurs through his association The Abundant Artist. I wanted to have him on the show to talk specifically about how to approach art from a mindset and marketing perspective.

I have found in my career that mindset trumps everything, and it’s the thing that artists have the hardest time overcoming. If they can overcome their mindset issues and become comfortable with money, then they can create a thriving company and dispel the idea of the starving artist.

In 2009 I started The Abundant Artist (TAA for short) as a way of teaching internet marketing to my artist friends who were asking me for help. Since then, I’ve helped dozens of artists go from never sold anything to now selling pieces monthly or weekly. Some of my artist friends and clients have gone on to sell their work for $20,000 or more.

I teach artists to dispel the starving artist myth by using the Web to sell art directly to your fans. If you want to get into a gallery or museum, the marketing skills I teach can help you do that. Building your own business online can be complementary to a gallery business for the right artists and galleries.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn:

-What is holding artists up from having a successful career.

-How Picasso became successful during his life while Van Gogh struggled

-How to get out of your own way and achieve success

-What you can do to prove yourself wrong every day

-How to have a better relationship with money

And much more.

If you liked this episode, make sure to check out Cory on Twitter @agoodhusband. Also, make sure to visit all his projects at www.coryhuff.com.

If you want a free chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build a Creative Career, just click here.

If you haven’t joined our Facebook group to help you make more money selling books, click here.

And don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you liked this episode.

Vito Delsante is a workhorse creator. He’s somebody I’ve known about for a while, but only known a short time, but people were always talking about him. We had Sean Izaakse on the show last year, for instance (listen to the show by clicking here), to talk about Thunderbolts and Stray, and Vito is the writer of that book. There’ve been a lot of that moments for me over the years, and I’m excited to have him on the show to talk about his career.

Here’s his bio, straight from his wiki page:

Delsante worked for the Canadian comics company Speakeasy Comics in a public relations capacity prior to their closing doors in the Spring of 2006 and was seen by some as the only public face in the company's final days. He was also a creator at Speakeasy, with part one of the six part series Fallout with Dean Haspiel printed as a back-up to Beowulf #7 before the series was canceled as a result of the publisher's closing. With the closing of the publisher, the future for Fallout is uncertain.

In March 2006, Delsante began a weekly column called Random Shuffle on Comicon.com's comics news website The Pulse. He is a store manager at one of New York's largest comic book retailers, Jim Hanley's Universe.

In August 2006 The Chemistry Set, a webcomics collective of which Delsante is a member, launched. He produces the comic Stuck with Thomas Williams and is currently writing FCHS, a "semi-autobiographical look" at his high school days, with artist Rachel Freire.[1]

In 2007, Delsante was slated to write a three-issue JSA Classified arc with artist Eric Wight.[2] He has written a graphic novel for Simon & Schuster based on the childhood of Albert Einstein. The book, Before They Were Famous, was due out in July 2008.[3] It never was published, but in February 2009, Aladdin published Delsante's biography of Babe Ruth, illustrated by Andrés Vera Martínez, part of the same Before They Were Famous series.

This to this episode if you want to learn:

-how music influences Vito’s process

-the value of deep work

-why you should focus on people who like your work

-how to tune out the naysayers

-how to make a superhero that feels mainstream but still sells to an indie market

And much more.

If you liked this episode, make sure to check out Vito on Twitter @incogvito. Also, make sure to order his new Stray series as it enters the Action Lab Actionverse.

If you want a free chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build a Creative Career, which is sort of the companion book to this one, just click here.

If you haven’t joined our Facebook group to help you make more money selling books, click here.

And don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you liked this episode.

My guest this week is Ben Templesmith. He is a comic book writer and artist most recognized as the artist on the 30 Days of Night comic which was adapted into a motion picture with the same name. Here is his bio, straight from his Wikipedia page.

Templesmith produced his first commercial American comics work in 2002, providing the art for Todd McFarlane Productions'Hellspawn, which was published by Image Comics. He has gone on to create his own original works as well as contribute to many licensed properties at various publishers, most notably IDW Publishing, with which he had an exclusive agreement through most of 2008 and part of 2009 before returning to being a freelancer.

This week I’ll be down at San Diego Comic-Con, and with all the hype around that event, I decided not to post an interview this week. I didn’t think it would be fair to any of our upcoming guests. So instead, I am doing something special. I’m giving you a sneak people inside my Facebook group, Writers and Authors Making Money Selling Books. It’s a completely free group I moderate that helps authors make more money by selling more books.

This episode is the audio from a live video I did for the group about the difference between something being complicated and it being hard. It’s a really important concept I hear people confusing all of the time, and I wanted to clear it up for the group.

-Why most advice is so complicated when it comes to making it as an author

-How simple the business side of writing really is

And many more insights I hammer home along the way. If you like this episode, don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe on iTunes, and if you want the FREE first chapter of my new non-fiction book Sell Your Soul: How to Build Your Creative Career, all you have to do is enter your email at www.gosellyoursoul.com

Jeff Goins is a national bestselling author of five books, most notably among them The Art of Work and his new book Real Artists Don’t Starve.

I was in the launch group for his new book and I loved it. It was everything I wanted to say, except much more eloquently and cohesively stitched together. If you’ve ever struggled with making money as an artist, this book makes the strongest case I’ve ever seen, full of a hundred stories of people who’ve made a living as an artist, making every type of art, both historically and through to today.

Now, if you’re already in the right headspace to make a living as an artist if you’ve got a good relationship with making money, and if you’re ready to rock and roll, maybe this isn’t the book for you. However, if you’ve struggled with making money in the past, or you need to get in a better headspace to make a living as an artist and not feel guilty about it, then this is the book for you. Check it out in the link below.

-Why you are doing a disservice to your audience by not letting them buy from you

And much more. Make sure to head on over to www.goinswriter.com if you liked this one. You can pick up some freebies from Jeff once you buy the book. He also has a great podcast called The Portfolio Life, which you should check out.

If you want a free chapter of my new book Sell Your Soul: How to Build a Creative Career, which is sort of the companion book to this one, just click here.

If you haven’t joined our Facebook group to help you make more money selling books, click here.

And don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you liked this episode.

Today’s episode is all about animation. I talk with animation director Vinton Heuck about his career trajectory, working up from a storyboard cleanup artist on X-Men and Spider-Man to an animation director on Young Justice season three.

I actually met Vinton without having any idea his resume. We were at a small convention called San Fernando Comic Con last December, and he was showing off his new book Mabigon, an original epic fantasy tale with Arthurian legend tones. We talked for a while during the show, and I friended him on Facebook later.

Then, a few months later they did the show again, and I was talking with Larry Houston, one of the directors of that seminal 90s X-Men cartoon, and he was talking about working with Vinton, and I said, hold up, the Mabigon guy?? That led me down the rabbit hole of asking Vinton all about his past and finding out he’s got a resume as long as my art.

We got to be friendly enough for me to ask him to come on the show and talk about his experience in animation, from a kid in Washington trying to work in comics (and getting a shot at drawing Green Hornet back when Now Comics owned the license), to driving down to Los Angeles to work for Saban on Captain America and Silver Surfer, to bouncing around Sony on Jackie Chan Adventures and Godzilla, until he finally found a home at Warner Brothers on The Batman show from the early 2000s, eventually rising to become an animation director on season 5.

Along the way, he’s worked with DC comics and made his own comics. If you’ve ever wanted to track an animation director’s career, Vinton gives a deep dive on exactly his step by step process to getting where he is today.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn:

The step-by-step of how Vinton went from living in Washington working as a security guard to directing Young Justice.

The secrets to surviving in animation for 20 years.

Why it’s so important to remain positive

Why success is all about perseverance

What he would tell himself to cut years off his career struggles

What he did right in his career to make him the artist he is today.

If you want to check out Mabigon, his original comic, head on over to www.mabigoncomic.com today. If you want to check out Mabigon on Facebook, click here.

If you like this show, please like, review, and subscribe to it by clicking here.

If you haven’t joined our Facebook group yet, now is the best time by clicking here.

When it comes to living a creative life, there are two types of motivation you can use in order to find meaning in your work. These forces can drive you toward success or madness, depending on which one you choose.

The first is external motivation. There are many types of external motivation, like the desire for fame, glory, money, or some sort of validation outside of yourself which will make your work meaningful.

Most people I encounter begin their creative life focused on these external motivations. They want to be actors because of a desire to walk the red carpet and make lots of money. They want to paint so they can be hung in the Met or the Louvre. They want to work for Marvel because millions of people will see their work and recognize them.

People motivated by external factors, however, quickly fade out. Almost nobody will ever be hung at a prestigious gallery, or work for Marvel, or achieve any sort of fame. That realization hits people like a ton of bricks and they run away without ever looking back.

Even if somebody does achieve some measure of success, that success may not exist in three years, three months, or even three days. People that achieve great fame and success often talk about the crippling depression that comes right along with it.

That’s because relying on external motivations to validate your life is a hollow pursuit. The only true way to succeed and be fulfilled is to be internally motivated by the love of creating something. This is the second type of motivation; internal motivation.

Being internally motivated means your validation comes from the creation of something, not from somebody appreciating it. It means you can motivate yourself instead of relying on other people to do it for you. The appreciation of your work by others is a bonus, but the true validation comes from making it in the first place.

Additionally, internal motivations create better art because you are no longer hamstrung by what society wants you to create. You are no longer looking for the right thing to make. You are making something that is unique to you. Ironically, by making something unique to you it becomes easier to find an audience for your work.

I’m not saying that external validation isn’t wonderful. There is nothing like selling something you’ve made. However, the sale of the product should be a bonus on top of the creation of something great.

I’m also not saying you should create without ever worrying about something’s salability. This is a book about making a career as a creative after all, not about creating weird and unsaleable material. However, the first step in creating great content is to actually make stuff for the sake of making it.

At the beginning of your creative pursuits, nothing you make is going to be saleable. Until you can hit that stride of making consistently great work, it’s important to create for the sake of creating and let that be its own reward.

Then, when you get to the level where you can create saleable material you can hold true to that internal motivation as a rudder while you look for ways to sell your work to a mass audience.

A perfect example of this is Laika. They are a stop motion animation house in a world full of computer-generated animation. Yet they have still been able to find an audience and put out Coraline, The Box Trolls, Paranorman, and Kubo and the Two Strings. That’s an amazing testament to internal motivation.

By developing that internal motivation, you will never be devastated when a product doesn’t catch on because the true value was in the creation of it. By being able to validate yourself, you can always keep going even in the face of tremendous adversity.

This episode showcases my dear friend Sebastian Jones, whose company Stranger Comics is seeing the type of explosive growth you hope for every company run by good people. With their message of inclusion, focus on fantastic stories, and 20 year journey to bring the world of Asunda onto the world stage, Stranger went from tabling next to me with one book and a couple of kid’s books and one graphic novel two years ago to getting massive 10”x20” corner booths and blowing out the type of sales numbers that would put your jaw on the ground.

Along the way, Sebastian has kept humble and focused. We had an amazing talk with ranged from creating worlds to selling at shows to building an audience over time, to handling scaling rapidly, and even what it’s like co-writing with Amandla Stenberg, who played Rue in the Hunger Games movies.

This is one of those interviews you don’t want to end because you have hundreds of unanswered questions, and every answer led to a dozen follow-ups, but what Seb shared was amazing, and I hope you will check out his new Kickstarter for Niobe: She is Life, which closes just a couple of days after this goes live. They’ve already passed $50,000 and their first OGN was one of the best I’ve ever read.

Listen to this episode is you want to learn:

-How to build a new world over more than 20 decades

-What most fantasy authors get wrong when writing their books

-The most important thing about building a shared universe

-The secret to finding a rabid audience and keep them coming back for more

-What Sebastian would do differently to cut years off his struggle to get where he is today

-The method Seb uses to get massive publicity for his launches

You can find Stranger comics on all the major platforms @strangercomics. Make sure to check out Niobe: She is Life on Kickstarter today by clicking here.

If you liked this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe today by clicking here.

If you haven’t joined our free Facebook group yet, you can do it today by clicking here.

This week on the show I’m excited to have Hope Larson as a guest. Hope is the current writer for Batgirl, but I know her from her amazing work on Chiggers, Compass South, and the A Wrinkle in Time graphic novel, along with having the most reasonably priced original art I’ve ever seen. I picked up three of her original pieces at ComicART two years ago for $25. Here is here bio, from Wikipedia:

While Larson was still in college, Scott McCloud took an interest in her illustrations, encouraging her to create comics. Soon after, she was invited to the webcomics anthology site Girlamatic and produced her first professional comic, a web serial entitled I Was There & Just Returned.[4] Afterward, Larson concentrated on a number of small, handmade minicomics, combining her interests in comics, screenprinting, and bookmaking.

She contributed to comics anthologiesFlight, True Porn 2, and You Ain't No Dancer, while working on a web-serialized graphic novel, Salamander Dream. This eventually became her first full-length book, published by AdHouse Books in September 2005; she moved to Oni Press for her second graphic novel, Gray Horses (released March 2006).

In 2006, Larson signed a two-book contract with New York publishing house Simon & Schuster. The first book under this deal, Chiggers (released June 18, 2008, under the Atheneum BooksGinee Seo imprint), is a graphic novel about "nerdy teenaged girls" who meet at summer camp. Chiggers is intended for a 9- to 12-year-old audience.[5]

March 26, 2016, It was announced she would be the new writer for DC Comics Batgirl A run that saw the character go on a backpacking trip through China on a voyage of self-discovery.

In addition to comics, Larson has worked as a freelance illustrator for various clients, including the New York Times.

This week on the show is another live show, but it's not a panel or a workshop. This panel is a spotlight panel with Ken Levin, founder of First Comics in both the 80s and during its relaunch in 2011.

Ken started First Comics in a world that only knew Marvel and DC, and he entered the scene as one of the first champions of creator rights that led directly and indirectly to the creation of Image Comics, and the industry as we see it today.

Of course, that's only one of Ken's claims to fame. Ken is also the lawyer behind every big comic creator from Neil Gaiman to Garth Ennis and beyond. He's been an executive producer and producer on almost every relevant comic book movie since the early 2000s, most notably Preacher, the amazing series from AMC.

So the City of Indio's Fantasia Comic Con brought me in as a moderator to ask Ken some questions, and let me tell you, this was the easiest moderation panel I've ever done. Ken could have talked for another six hours straight without another word from me.

If you ever wanted to know about the history of independent comics, how to turn a comic book into a movie, or anything else that's happened in comics since the early 80s, this is the panel for you.

If you like this episode, go find Ken at a show (he doesn't do a lot of social media), and check out First Comic's books. They are awesome. They put out Zen: The Intergalactic Ninja, several books from the Yuan Twins, and much more.

If you like this show, head on over to iTunes to rate, review, and subscribe to the show by clicking here.

If you are an author or creator who wants to make more money selling books, join our free Facebook group by clicking here.

This week I’m bringing you a live workshop I did at Wyrdcon 2017 about how to build an audience from scratch. This is the holy grail, people. There is no point in making things if you don’t have an audience to buy it, unless you really don’t want people responding to your work. Since every artist I’ve ever met wants more people to respond to their work, it’s critically important that we are able to talk about building an audience.

There is an audience from literally everything on the planet, and if you can find yours, then you can start to make money on your art.

Here’s the description of my panel, straight from the Wyrdcon website:

Whether you are an author, and artist, a game designer, or a baker, you need an audience to buy your product. Building an audience is the critical factor that grows your business. Without it, your business can't become sustainable. Join Russell Nohelty, publisher of Wannabe Press and host of The Business of Art podcast, as he breaks down audience building and makes it attainable for everybody.

The last part of that description is the most important in my opinion because this panel is all about making the process of building an audience attainable for everybody.

Listen to this episode if you want to find out:

-The five steps you must follow in order to build a rabid fanbase

-How to find your ideal client avatar

-Why you need to figure out your audience before you go looking for them

Have you ever started a comic and not finished it? Are you in the middle of production on a comic and getting lost in the weeks? Do you lie awake at night trying to figure out how your book will ever get done?

That’s the topic of this week’s live episode, recorded at Silicon Valley Comicon. It’s for everybody that’s been in the weeds producing a comic and doesn’t know where to go next. I put together an amazing panel of guest who’ve all successfully produced comic books, from creators to publishers to artists and everything in between. Here’s the description, straight from the panel guide.

TITLE: How to get a comic over the finish line

DESCRIPTION:Does making a comic seem insurmountable? Are you stuck in the middle of production? Then this is the panel for you. Join a group of veteran indie comic creators as they discuss what it takes to get a project over the finish line and into the hands of readers.

You’ll recognize some of these guests from other episodes of my show over the years. You can listen to Barbra Dillon on her own spotlight panel here, and she talked about building an audience with Madeleine Holly-Rosing here.

You can also catch Madeleine on previous panels talking about Kickstarter here and how to sell at conventions here, along with her spotlight episode here.

I won’t lie. Pat Shand is a guy I’m a little jealous of because he seamlessly weaves comics and novels into one awesome career. He’s raised $20,000+ on Kickstarter and had exclusive contracts with comic publishers. He’s written Marvel books, including Guardians of The Galaxy, and he’s just killing it.

I’m not even gonna attempt to list out the rest of his bibliography here, but you can find it by clicking here.

I don’t know how Pat and I met, especially because we live on different coasts, but I am super excited that we did because he has been an awesome and supportive friend along with making great projects. I must track down Vampire Emmy and the Garbage Girl somewhere. It’s essential to by existence.

Pat came on the show to talk about building a living as a writer and to pimp his new book Clonsters, which is on Kickstarter now. You should check it out. The art is incredible.

Listen to this episode if you want to know:

Why you shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to your fans

How to bridge the writing gap between comics and novels

Why networking is so important to writing success

How Pat writes 3+ novels in a year

Why you shouldn’t be pissed at creators if their covers suck

How to book jobs (both the sneaky way and the best way)

Why you should always buy from creators you meet

How to test an artist properly

If you like this episode, tell Pat by finding him @patshand on twitter. Talk to him positively about stuff you love if you want to win his heart.

If you are digging this show, please head on over to iTunes to subscribe, rate, and review it today by clicking here.

If you are an author or creator yourself, don’t forget to join our FREE Facebook community, Authors and Creators Making Money Selling Books, by clicking here.

This week’s show features Beth Scorzato, freelance editor, and maker of cool things. I’ve known Beth since she moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, and she was on my list of people I’ve wanted on the show since the beginning. Here’s her bio, straight from www.bethscorzato.com.

I'm originally from Connecticut, where I grew up in theater, surrounded by the workings of my mother's costume shop, a local business which started in our basement. I thought I'd be in theater forever, but I fell in love with comics during college at SUNY Purchase, where I earned my BA in Journalism. I continued to study publishing at Pace University, where I earned my MS in Book and Magazine Publishing.

Since then I've worked at Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Papercutz Graphic Novels, and Lion Forge Comics, as well as boutique YA literary development house Paper Lantern Lit. Currently, in addition to my freelance work, I am a partner and Editor-in-Chief at GeekChic Comics.

Best is one of the few editors I know who doesn’t have a burning desire to write as well. She really loves editing and it comes through in everything she talks about in this episode. Listen to this episode if you want to know:

Why prior success as a creator is important to whether a company will hire you

What you should look for when hiring an editor

Why editors are so important

If you liked this episode, find Beth on Twitter or Instagram @girladactyl, or on her site www.bethscorzato.com.

If you enjoy this show, please like, rate, and review it on iTunes by clicking here. AND if you are an author or creator who wants to make more money selling books, join our FREE Facebook community by clicking here.

This week we have another live show from Long Beach Comic Expo. This is our last live panel from that show, and it was an awesome one, especially if you ever wanted to learn how to sell at conventions. Our awesome panelists are some of the best I know at selling at conventions, and I brought them all together to show how their styles are different, and how you can be successful as an artist, writer, or even editor.

Here’s a description of the panel, right from the program guide:

It’s incredibly expensive to exhibit at a show. Not only are there table fees involved, but you have to pay for products and marketing materials among many other expenses. Most creators go into their first exhibiting experience blind and end up losing a lot of money. Don’t let that happen to you. Join moderator Russell Nohelty (Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter) as he talks with a panel of experienced con veterans including Mike Wellman (Guns A’ Blazin’), Gwendolyn Dreyer (Monster Elementary), Madeleine Holly-Rosing (Boston Metaphysical Society) and Daniel De Sosa (Purrvana) as they give you their best tips to make money at conventions and make sure you are profitable from day one.

Most of these awesome creators have been on the show before. You can catch Gwendolyn Dreyer’s of my show here, and listen to her talking about building an audience from scratch here. You can listen to Madeleine talking about Kickstarter here, building an audience here, and on her own spotlight episode here. You can hear Mike and I debate Kickstarter vs. self-funding comics here and here. The only person who hasn’t been on the show at all is Daniel, but I can assure you he is a con selling rock star.

If you like this episode please make sure to find the panelists online to thank them. They can be found below.

This week is another live episode, this time from the Comic Creator Conference at Long Beach Comic Expo. I know it feels like I’ve done a ton of live shows recently, but I have such a backlog of amazing panels that I want to get them out while they’re still relevant. Usually I like to toggle through interviews, live shows, and lessons, but with the anthology interview series blocking out seven weeks, I stockpiled a bunch of these episodes, and there are STILL MORE!

I know I still owe you an episode on the Kickstarter, but I want to make sure to collect all my thoughts, and that I’m feeling well, before I dig in to unpack that massive undertaking.

This panel is all about the Politics of Partnership. I was lucky enough to be asked to moderate one of the coolest, most epic panels of my entire career at this show, including a funny story that shows how a career can come full circle in just a few years. I won’t spoil it, but it involves being fired from Boom! While Mark Waid was the CCO.

This amazing panel is filled with fantastic guests. Here’s the panel description, straight from the C3 website.

Working with a creative team on an independent title or through a major publisher can come with questions of ownership and percentages. Mark Waid, Dean Haspiel and Amy Reeder discuss how to navigate these waters and negotiate the best deal for all parties involved.

We were also joined on the panel by Brandon Montclare, Amy’s partner on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Rocket Girl. Between all the panelists involved, we had dozens of years of experience in both good and bad partnerships. They dropped knowledge bombs galore.

Hope you enjoy it. If you did, let the panelists know on Twitter or Facebook. If you liked this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review by clicking here.

And if you are an author or creator, looking to make more money selling books, I highly recommend our new Facebook group, Authors and Creators Making Money Selling Books. It’s no promo, just awesome content. Join now by clicking here.

This week on the show we have another live episode. This time, it’s an amazing panel I moderated and put together from Emerald City Comicon. The fact that me, as a first-time vendor at the show, was able to book a panel at Emerald City Comicon was pretty amazing, and it was almost entirely due to the amazing panel we were able to put together to talk about building an art portfolio and pitching to an editor, which is the topic of this panel.

This is the description, straight from the Emerald City ComiCon site: Before you can book jobs with publishers, you need to know how to build a portfolio. Once you've built a portfolio, you need to know how to pitch an editor or publisher. This panel combines both steps into one information-packed hour. Learn how to build and pitch your portfolio from pros who have worked in the industry for years.

I went out to find a diverse group of panelist who could hit this from all angles. I brought in writers, artists, publishers, editors, and art directors. Here’s a list of the panelists.

It was an amazing and diverse panel of experts in every field of hiring and creating art. Two of our guests are returning to the show for this panel. Margot Atwell talked about Kickstarter here and Tom Hutchison discussed building a publishing business here.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, make sure to find the panelists online and say thanks! If you like this show, please write, review, and subscribe to it on iTunes by clicking here.

And if you are a writer or creator looking to sell more books, then join our free Facebook Community, Writers and Creators Making Money Selling Books, by clicking here.

Today on the show I have Angela Lauria, founder of the Author Incubator, which has successfully launched over 270 bestselling authors into the stratosphere. I had to have her on to talk about her success and how she can create bestselling authors on autopilot. Here’s a little about the Author Incubator, from their website www.theauthorincubator.com:

People will tell you writing a book is a struggle, but with my system, it’s simple. There’s you and your book which is already written inside you. It already exists. We simply have to clear away the stuff between you and it.

The Author Incubator provides a structure and space so coaches and other healing professionals can get their message out to the world by writing a book that makes a difference with clarity and ease.

I’ve worked with hundreds of authors in transformation and what we’ve found is there are really only 10 pieces of the puzzle to writing a book that actually changes people’s lives. See writing a book SEEMS very complicated and that can make it overwhelming, but if you can master these 10 steps, you will have a book that makes a difference in many people’s lives. So would you like to know the steps?

That almost makes writing a bestselling book seem attainable to everybody, right? I actually found Angela from a Facebook ad, another nut I’ve been unable to crack successfully, and decided to reach out and see if she would be on the show. I expected nothing, but she replied the same day.

What amazed me about her advice for Amazon book launches was how similar it is to my advice about launching a Kickstarter. I shouldn’t be surprised, though, since a book launch is a book launch is a book launch.

If you enjoy this one with Angela, make sure to like her page on Facebook by clicking here, and follow her on Twitter by clicking here.

And I know you are jonesing for some Kickstarter knowledge and I promise I’m going to do a post about it eventually, but in the meantime, you can head on over to my Kickstarter Toolkit by clicking here and seeing everything I’ve ever said about the topic.

If you want to get somebody interested in buying your product, whether it’s a book, a print, or even your services, you need to start with a dynamite pitch.

In my experience, you don’t have much time to catch somebody’s interest. Luckily, I’ve perfected the steps to a good pitch so you can gain somebody’s attention in a minimal amount of time. Once they’re hooked, you can spend as much time as you want with them. The trick is getting them interested in the first place.

I’ve tailored this formula through dozens of shows, but it can be used on social media, in meetings, or basically anywhere you need to get somebody’s attention.

A pitch needs to be simple and concise with specific appeals for your intended audience. There are tons of steps that go into a great pitch. Don’t worry if you get frustrated with it. Pitching, like any art form, gets better with practice.

Step 1: The question

The first step in any good pitch is the question. This is where you get your potential customer to engage with you by answering a simple yes or no question.

My first question to passersby at a convention is usually “Do you want to see a cool comic?” However, as the variety of titles at Wannabe Press grows, my pitches vary depending on what I am trying to push on any given day. If I want to sell more of my murder mystery novel, the question is “Do you like murder?” If I am trying to sell kids’ books, the question is “Wanna see something that will put your kid to sleep?”

The people who stopped and replied “yes” were immediately self-identifying that they were interested in what I was pitching. I knew they were in my target market because they said “yes.”

One of the most important concept in sales is the idea that many small yeses lead to one big yes—the big yes being a sale. If you can get people to say “yes” over and over again, they are confirming their interest in your product, and you have positioned yourself well to win their business.

If you are selling yourself and not your product, your question might be, “Are you sick of freelancers that bail?” or “Are you having trouble making people notice your brand?” If you are selling prints, you might ask, “Are you looking for a new accent piece for your bedroom?” or “Are your walls annoyingly bare?”

You won’t know exactly what works until you get out into the world and test several possibilities, but the idea is to get somebody to say “yes” to you right off the bat with a simple, innocuous question.

Step 2: The option

Once your potential customer is engaged with your pitch, you need to give them a simple two-choice option to move the conversation along to the next step. This option is another way to make your potential customer self-identify their preferences. When there are two comic books on my table, I ask “Do you like psychological mind screws or girls that kick butt?”

By giving them the choice, I’ve forced them to buy into their preference. Psychologically, this puts people in a more receptive mood to buy. By choosing their favorite, they agree they are interested in what I am selling. Now, all I have to do is make my case and hope they bite.

The beauty of this option is that I know every possible outcome and can plan my pitch accordingly. You know what your pitch will be if they say option one, and you know your pitch if they say option two. Even if they don’t pick either option, you know your next step because you’ve limited their potential responses. For instance, if they say “both,” or if they pause for more than a second, I always pitch my best seller.

Some people prefer to ask their customers open-ended questions, but that is a dangerous game. If you ask a question like “What are you shopping for today?” or “What do you like?” you are giving the power to the buyer. They could say anything. For all you know, they might say, “I’m here because goats are cool.” By using the two-choice option, you get all the advantages of engagement with none of the risk posed by open-ended questions.

By narrowing down your potential customer’s options, you can nail your pitch every time. With pitching, even a few seconds’ delay can be the difference between a sale and the customer walking away in disgust.

Step 3: The pitch

Did you notice there are two steps before we even get to the pitch? This is called “priming the customer,” and it allows for you to get a couple of yeses before you even pitch the product. It also forces the customer to self-identify as a member of your ideal audience—twice. This leads to a more engaged listener and higher overall sales.

Your pitch is a simple one-sentence summary of your project’s biggest hook. For example, my pitch for Katrina Hates Dead Shit is: a woman gets sick of living during the Apocalypse so she sets out to Hell to Kill the Devil.

It’s short, sweet, and to the point. Most importantly, it creates an emotional connection with my ideal customer. The perfect customer of that book will hear my pitch and have a visceral reaction to it.

That’s the most important part of your pitch. It’s not about what your product does. It about creating an emotional connection to your customer. People make purchases based on emotion, so you need to make an emotional connection to the buyer. The good news is they’ve already self-identified that they want to hear your pitch. Now, all you must to do is nail the emotional hook.

Emotional connection is a powerful thing, and it’s the most powerful buying trigger you have to help boost your sales. When somebody doesn’t know you, they must be able to connect with your product emotionally in order for you to make a sale.

Don’t worry if you don’t have this down perfectly at first. Discovering the emotional resonance of your product is difficult. You should write out ten to twenty potential pitches and then start delivering them to people to find the one with the best emotional connection. Most likely, you will need to combine the best parts of several pitches for the best effect.

Before a product ever even launches, I spend hundreds of hours developing the exact wording of its pitch. I show people our in-progress work, tell them as much as I can about it, and watch how they react, noting which parts of my description light them up. I mold that all into the perfect pitch. By the time the product launches, I know the exact emotional beats necessary to maximize sales.

Step 4: The flavor

Once you finish your pitch, let it settle in for a moment with your potential customer. Let them look at the product and turn it over a couple times. Once they’ve looked at it for a few seconds, you should start adding on some flavor elements to spice up your pitch. This is when you start peppering in some unique selling points and your value proposition for whatever you are selling.

These flavor elements are things they can’t find easily by looking at your product, like where it was made, why you made it, or who worked on it with you. Every product is different, and you need to find the right “spice” to resonate with a product’s ideal audience.

For my graphic novel, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, people respond when I tell them about our influences for making the book, that we used a single artist for everything, and that it’s a complete story. With Katrina Hates the Dead, I know they respond when I talk about the artist going on to work on a Star Wars story and that we have additional process images in the back showing how we made the book. Each of these bits of flavor perk up the reader and strengthen their desire to buy the product.

Step 5: The acceptance

Before you ask for the sale, you want to get them to agree once again that the product is cool. This can be as simple as “Pretty cool, right?” You are priming them one more time before asking them to buy. They’ve agreed this is a product they want—three times—and now it’s time to ask for the sale.

Step 6: The ask

Ask for the business by stating the price of your services and giving them another optional close. For instance, you could say, “This book is twenty dollars or two for thirty,” or “Will that be cash or charge?” This final optional close once again primes the customer that they are going to buy. Instead of the option being yes or no, it’s, “How do I want to pay?”

Don’t be too pushy here. You’ll see their reaction when you state the price. Most people will back off, some will buy, and some will be on the fence. For the people who back off, exchange cards and add them to your mailing list. For the people who buy, have them pay and add them to your mailing list. For the people on the fence, move on to step seven.

Step 7: Objection handling

Most people aren’t going to buy your project. Some will flat out say no, but others will sit on the fence waiting for you to convince them to buy. They want your product but you haven’t given them a strong enough reason to give you their hard-earned money. So, you have to give them a good reason to buy.

With these people, you want to give them another question, like “What’s stopping you from buying this right now?” However, a better question would be, “I know you want this, but you’re trying to save your money to see if there is something better, right?”

They will almost always agree with this, and then you can make them a special offer, something like, “What if I gave you a money-back guarantee? If you find something better at this con, come back and I will give you your money back.” I’ve been making this offer for years, and nobody has ever come back to get their money back.

Maybe they will have a great reason, like “I’m not getting paid for two weeks.” Maybe they have a crappy reason you can easily overcome and make them a customer. Perhaps the pricing is too high, and in that case you can lower the price slightly, or maybe they really want multiple pieces, in which case you can offer them bundle pricing.

If you can overcome these objections in one round of objection handling, then you should have a customer on your hand. If they still have objections, try to flush them out with one more round before giving up.

You want to do at most two rounds of this objection handling. If you can’t make a sale by then, exchange cards, add them to your mailing list, and make them a future prospect. You can keep going for as long as you want with objections, but I’ve found if you can’t convince them with two chances, then they most likely won’t buy, at least not until later.

In practice, this entire pitch, from meeting a customer through objection handling, takes no more than a couple of minutes, max. It’s the whittling down everything you want to say into a couple sentences that takes forever. The actual pitch should be no more than two minutes.

The first time you do it, it won’t take two minutes. It will take forever, and you’ll get everything wrong. You’ll sound terrible. You’ll say things in the wrong order. You’ll say things you didn’t mean to say. You’ll ramble on forever. You’ll be…just awful.

That’s okay.

It’s unnatural to talk about your project. Nobody likes to do it. Since you don’t want to do it, either, you’ll stop after two or three attempts. Then, you’ll hang your head in shame and never want to do it again.

Don’t give up.

That’s the key to this. You can’t stop. You have to keep going. Over time you will get better. The more you practice your “pitching muscle,” the better you’ll get and the more natural you will become. The key to a pitch is that it can’t sound like a pitch. It has to sound natural, and it can’t sound natural until you’ve done it a thousand times. You can’t do it a thousand times if you stop after the first attempt.

You’re supposed to suck at this at first. Sucking at something, as Jake the Dog from Adventure Time says, is the first step to being kind of good at something. If you want to be kind of good at pitching, you have to do the work. There are no shortcuts in coming up with and practicing a compelling pitch. The only secret is to do it a whole bunch of times.

Nicholas Doan and Gwendolyn Dreyer are two of my favorite people in the comics community. They are incredible at giving of their time and knowledge, along with making dope ass books.

I brought them on the show to talk about anthology in conjunction with the launch of my new anthology Monsters and Other Scary Shit. Click here to check it out. For just $40 you get a hardcover of the book, digital print, and pdf, including shipping in the USA!

Nick and Gwen put together the amazing Monster Elementary anthology. Published by Spacegoat Productions, Monster Elementary tells the stories of five monsters who are forced to attend a normal human elementary school, with hilarious consequences. Here is the premise, pulled straight from www.monsterelementary.com:

Monster Elementary is a fun, witty, comedy/adventure comic for children of all ages featuring five monster children based on classic monster movie archetypes. These five monster kids are forced to attend a human public school after their monsters-only private school is raided by the FBI. To their surprise, they're not allowed to eat any of the other students. The monsters’ adventures and experiences hiding their identities and growing up are the focal point of the book.

The book is amazing, and they have been in the trenches for a long time, attending cons, and slinging books. It was great to talk with them about Kickstarter, the state of indie comics, and anthologies. You are going to get a ton of value out of this massive episodes. I highly recommend you listen. However, if you just want the cliff notes, here is their list of the top five things you must know before starting an anthology.

1.) Make sure you have a variety of art styles. What's the point of doing an anthology if it all looks the same?

2.) Try to have all your stories end in even page numbers. There may be circumstances where that is less than ideal, but it will make the layout stage go SO much faster.

3.) Make sure to balance the desire for diversity in stories with the need to stay on theme. Always be asking yourself, "Why does this story need to be in THIS book?"

4.) Make sure your cover, and front and back matter have a strong sense of design reflecting the stories and theme of the book. It can be difficult to find a unifying design, but it's necessary to accurately convey to your potential reader what's inside.

5.) Make sure you finish big. Make sure the last story in your book is on theme, impactful, and is the lasting memory you want your reader to have at the end stick with them when they reflect on your book.

If you dug this episode, make sure to head on over to www.monsterelementary.com and let Gwen and Nick know, or find them on twitter @monsterelem. Tell them they need an Instagram, too!

Don’t forget to check out the Kickstarter for my book, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, live on Kickstarter now. Nick has a 7-page story inside with awesome artist Daniele Serra! Back it today by clicking here.

It’s just $40 for a hardcover book, digital print of the cover, and pdf, including shipping! That’s 224 pages of monster goodness. Click here to back today!

Also, head on over to iTunes to subscribe, rate and review today. Just click here and subscribe today!

D.J. Kirkbride is one of the people who I looked up to when I started doing cons. He had an Eisner, a ton of creator friends, and an awesome reputation. Over the years, he’s kept increasing his stable of books from Popgun at Image, to Amelia Cole at IDW, to The Biggest Bang at Dark Horse, to his new book The Once and Future Queen from Dark Horse, which you can find in stores now.

Honestly, I’m really impressed he gets any work with Dark Horse, since they put out so few titles, but I’m always impressed with people who can keep getting books published again and again with big time publishers. I guess it’s a little flaw in my personality where I look longingly at writers who were able to get a publishing deal with a big indie company.

On top of having a book that ran for 30 issues in Amelia Cole, D.J. is one of my favorite people in comics because he’s genuinely nice and helpful all the time. I asked him to come onto the show to talk about his work, but mostly to jam about anthologies. I recently read Popgun Volume 3, the volume that won him an Eisner, and I have to say it was one of the coolest, most beautiful anthology I’ve ever seen. It had no theme at all, just back-to-back awesome stories; 450 pages of them.

Having reached the pinnacle of prestige anthology making, I wanted to have D.J. on to talk about his biggest takeaways from making anthologies. We talked for over an hour about his work, but he was nice enough to send me his bullet points in case you don’t want to listen to the whole episode. Here they are.

Organization is key. Something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet can save your ass. There's a lot to keep track of when dealing with a large number of creators on an anthology.

Bigger isn't necessarily better. With POPGUN, each book got bigger. I thought keeping the price point the same while upping the page count would add incentive for readers, but that didn't pan out. We got to include more great comics, but it wasn't financially responsible.

Themes can be good. While I loved and love the "anything goes" mixtape feel of POPGUN, we might've had an easier time finding readers if we'd had a loose theme for each volume. I'm not sure, though, at least not for POPGUN. The variety was king, but overall, for anthologies, a theme can be good.

A great cover speaks volumes. Mike Allred, Paul Pope, Tara McPherson, Ben Templesmith-- whoa buddy, yeah, we were honored and lucky to have them on our POPGUN covers. A great artist with a cool visual coupled with excellent design, which we had on our covers from Fonografiks, can really help you sell all the awesome comics inside.

You have to LOVE it. Careers aren't often made editing most anthologies, nor is any money. You need to enjoy getting cool work out there to curious and adventurous readers.

There are some themes emerging from all of these interviews, and I can’t wait to do the wrap-up show of the Kickstarter to discuss my biggest takeaways. If you liked this episode, head on over to Twitter and let @djkirkbride know how much you enjoyed it.

If you love anthologies, especially ones with monsters, head over and check out our anthology live on Kickstarter now @ www.monsteranthologycomic.com.

And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes by clicking here. It helps more than you know.

This week on the show we welcome back Amanda Meadows to Jam out about anthologies with me! Amanda is the publisher of Wannabe Press along with Geoffrey Golden, and their awesome comedy publisher started our through anthologies, specifically Devastator Press.

If you haven’t listened to her previous episode, check it out by clicking here.

This episode is part of the celebration of our new anthology project, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, a 224-page monster anthology about monsters, which is live on Kickstarter now. It’s 47 creators and 30 comics about monsters of all kinds; funny monster, scary monster, fantasy monsters, sci-fi monster, and more. It’s just $40 shipped right to your door (in the US), and you get the pdf of the book included, and a digital download of the cover image, at no extra charge! Check it out today by clicking here.

I wanted to have Amanda back on the show, specifically, because she’s created 13 different anthologies, and really built her entire business from anthologies into a full line publisher. I wanted to know the top five pitfalls new anthology creators should avoid when they are planning their project.

Here’s her list.

1.Sloppy Planning + Infrastructure Most people beginning an anthology project for the first time don’t realize they need a process in place for accepting and managing submissions (what’s your timeline? where’s your documentation?), streamlining production (what’s your CMS?), keeping all their assets in order (where are all the files kept and backed up?), getting consistent final files (what are the print specs? do you have PS or InD template?) from all their contributors. All those above questions have to be answered before you start taking pieces, or it’ll be a monster of a puzzle for you at the end of the project.

2.Lack of Guidance (AKA Lateness) There can be a reluctance from editors of anthologies to, well, be editors. They want to commission the piece then expect it in their inbox by a certain date. But many contributors need more help in order to finish their pieces. Many creatives don’t really know (they were never trained) how to manage other creatives. The biggest issue in this category is lateness. One late piece can cause a cascade of production problems and delays. Learning how to communicate effectively and promptly with contributors is key to, if not preventing, then at least managing late pieces better.

3.Loose Curation An anthology is as good as its curation. There can and will always be amazing gems, but if the one story doesn’t work after another, it can make the whole book feel less amazing. You also want to ensure that there is a baseline of art and writing quality you’re sticking to. Nail down your criteria for submissions and make sure you’re transparent about those criteria if submissions are open to the public. There can and absolutely should be anthologies for newcomers and beginners, but if you are doing that, make sure you’ve chosen styles and tones that complement each other, and stories that make sense for the theme of the book. The order of stories can make or break a reading experience.

4.Zero Retail Marketing or Publicity

Just, in general. Anthologies don’t exactly get the star treatment in comics shops or book stores. They’re hard to sell unless there’s some major internet juice or star power behind it. So you have to be crafty and have a plan. Not just the Kickstarter plan, but the afterlife plan. How are you going to sell the stock remaining after shipping to your online orders? How will you mobilize your contributors to push the book beyond the first few months of release? If you’re going to conventions, how will you promote those appearances? How will you retain interest in the book after year one, two, three of it being available?

5.The Urge to Make More Anthologies I dunno, do you need to make another one? Sometimes it makes sense to let the anthology go, and move on the next big challenge: writing or editing a full-length graphic novel, starting a new indie series, or write a novella. Sometimes the arduous task of launching a good anthology is enough to prepare you for the next thing. For example, if you make a gorgeous and well-received anthology like my friend Taneeka Stotts did with the queer fantasy tome BEYOND, you should try to roll that goodwill into a partnership with another entity, get a gig on another book — seize the moment. If you’ve got a hit on your hands and see specific demand for more anthologies, great! Do it. Otherwise, consider taking a break and moving on to a new format and change things up.

I really appreciate her putting together such a thorough, thoughtful list. This is all advice I would have loved to have before I planned my first anthology. I mean my book turned out amazing, but some of it was just because of the awesome creators that I chose to work with, and not so much my amazing organizational sense. I ended up hoping it would work out because of my own scheduling issues, and it just happened to be amazing at the end of the day.

If you want to thank Amanda for her amazing advice, Amanda is on twitter @amandonium. You can find Devastator Press on Twitter @getdevastated.

If you love the show, please go to iTunes by clicking here. Please subscribe to the show, rate and review us today.

Finally, go check out our amazing 224-page monster anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, live on Kickstarter now. If you love monsters, this is the anthology for you. Check it out by clicking here.

Brandon Perlow is an interesting cat. I met him soon after he raised over $20,000 on Kickstarter for the Eisner-nominated Watson and Holmes, and we’ve been friends ever since, feeding each other advice on publishing and Kickstarter. I’ve learned a ton from him over the years, and I’m so glad he came on to talk about Kickstarter and anthologies. Considering we are currently running a comic book anthology Kickstarter this is perfect synergy with our current campaign.

In fact, he prepared a list of the top five things he learned from working on an anthology project and how to make them success. Here is his list:

1) The tighter the theme and subject are, the better. For instance, having an anthology dedicated to Watson and Holmes is better than having a broad anthology based on a group of people, or an anthology with no theme at all, like Our First Anthology.

2) Vary up the creators. It’s good to have creators who are well known and ones that are up and coming. You never know what up and coming creators will one day be massive stars, and the well-known creators help boost up the immediate sales and professionalism of your book.

3) The quality of the stories is what matters. You want the work to be of good quality. Anthologies are a great place for creators to show something different, but just make sure the art and stories are very high all around.

4) Size matters. Sometimes bigger is better. but not always. Try to have as many good stories as possible. That’s what people will remember. Don’t fill the anthology with junk just to make it bigger for the sake of size.

5) Packaging is important. At the end of the day the reader is what matters. If you don’t have something awesome then nobody will buy it, so make sure to make the packaging something readers will want.

He also got some bonus insights from noted Sherlock Holmes author Lyndsay Faye, who has contributed to many anthologies.

Obviously quality consistency is my biggest issue, but I also like variety when it comes to both style and length. Solid editing with a strong eye for plot is also key, because a lot of anthologies let authors get away with things that the editor of a book wouldn’t — plot holes, language problems, etc. And I want them ordered well, with an arc that makes sense from start to finish.

I hope this helps you plan your next anthology. Brandon mentioned a previous episode of my show with Tim Powers, which you can find here.

If you liked this episode, please head on over and tell Brandon thank you at @bperlownps on Twitter. If you like this show, head on over to iTunes and rate, review, and subscribe today. It only takes 30 seconds and it helps more than you could ever know. All you have to do is click here to be redirected.

And most importantly, we are currently running a Kickstarter campaign for our anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit. It’s a 224-page monster anthology about monsters. Check it out by clicking here and get your copy today!

This week we’re talking anthologies, shockingly since we have our anthology live on Kickstarter now (Have you backed? No? You probably should. Just click here) with our good friend Christine Hipp. Christine came on to talk about her first anthology on this episode, and she’s back to talk about her new anthology, the MANthology, and everything she’s learned in the past year.

I can definitely sympathize with her more this year than during her last appearance since I’ve spent the previous 12 months figuring out my own anthology project. I didn’t want to rehash the same episode we did before, so this episode we did a top five list of things she learned from building three anthologies in 12 months.

Here are Christine’s 5 things she learned from editing three anthologies in the last year:

Trust your gut - I don't know what your gut is like, but mine tells me to do things like check in with creators, remind people about deadlines, and double check work for typos. About 90% of the time this turns out to be really good advice.

Pad your schedule - People get sick, emails get lost, someone is always going to need an extension. Do yourself a favor and account for that in your project schedule so you don't have to stress out as much about getting to print on time.

Respect the Project Plan - Every time we start a new anthology we copy the project plan from the previous book. If contributors asking how to format a script or what size the pages should be, we can add that info that the project plan and know it won't be an issue for the next anthology.

The release party is where it's at - if you want people to buy your anthology tell them where they can get it, and make that event as appealing as possible with food, drinks, karaoke, and as many cool contributors as you have table space for. You can make fliers, post it on social media, and interview on podcasts (wink) to build hype, but the best results will always come from contributors telling their friends, family, and fans about this cool new book they worked on.

The theme is your foundation - It's how you convince contributors to join the project, it's how you'll sell your book to potential readers. It will also help you make other important decisions like what should go on the cover, what age group the book should target, and how tonally consistent the book will be.

That’s a great list. Everything on it is super important. I made my own top 5 list from what I learned from making my own anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit.

Here is my top 5 list. There is some overlap, but that’s mostly because creating an anthology has a set of rules, just like everything else.

You need to have the right group of collaborators. It’s not about finding people once you submit, you need to know at least a core group before you start.

A certain percentage of people will drop out along the way. Originally had tons of interest. Of that interest 350 pages committed. Of that 220 pages came through.

You are the leader. You need to set up the Facebook group, be on people about deadlines, and get everything together. It’s all on your shoulders to make sure it turns out right. Even though it’s a jam book, you have the vision.

Give creators lots of time to deliver. If you aren’t paying people, you need to give them a lot of time to do the book, but you shouldn’t give them tons of extensions just because they are working for free. It devalues the work of everybody who was on time.

Do all the cons. You have to go to so many cons and launch events to make sure your campaign is successful. It’s all about meeting people in person, and turning that into online sales.

Here’s a little bonus tip for all of you out there as well.

BONUS: You will never work with every artist you love in your career, so anthologies are a great way to work with friends and people you admire who you would never otherwise work with, either because they do the same job as you (i.e. they are also writers) or because they don’t work in your style. It’s also a way for people to try out different genres.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did please like, subscribe and rate us on iTunes by clicking here.

We’re doing something a little new and a little weird on this episode of The Business of Art. This episode is the second part of a two-parter I recorded with my friend Tyler James from Comixtribe and the Comixlaunch podcast. The first part of this two-parter is where he interviewed me and you can find it at www.comixlaunch.com.

In this second part, I interview him about his publishing company, Kickstarter, and his history in indie comics. Here’s a little snippet about Comixtribe from their website @ www.comixtribe.com.

We recorded this episode back in November, but between his 6-Day Kickstarter challenge and my Kickstarter launch, it's been tough to schedule it in. This feel like the right time. Even though this doesn't fit with our anthology theme, it's definitely heavy into the process of funding a comic Kickstarter and building a publishing company.

We waited so long to drop this episode because both of us are in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign right now. His campaign is SINK, and it's one of the scarier things I've ever read. You can check it out by clicking here.

If you haven't checked out my new anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, it's a 224-page monster anthology about monsters, filled with creators from Marvel, Vertigo, Image, Boom, and who've worked for brands like Transformers, My Little Pony, Invader Zim, and many others. Check it out today @ www.monsteranthologycomic.com.

The grand vision of what ComixTribe will become is extremely ambitious. The ultimate goal is to make ComixTribe a premier online community and resource for comic creators serious about improving their craft.

We have an ambitious and exciting roadmap laid out for the development of the site. However, we’re starting small and simple, with an initial focus on producing quality content geared toward comic creators. We are curating a small selection of quality columns, podcasts, and resources we’re confident will appeal to the comic creating community at large. Through frequent, consistent, and quality content updates, we hope to establish ComixTribe as a voice worth listening to. As the community builds, we’ll incorporate new features that will go beyond content, to meet the many needs of comics creators. ComixTribe will also sponsor special online events for creators throughout the year, such as the popular 30 Characters Challenge.

If you don’t know about the Comixlaunch podcast, Tyler hosts one of the best podcasts on Kickstarter around, and it’s ABSOLUTELY the best podcast that deals with how to launch a comic book on Kickstarter. Here’s a little bit about them from www.comixlaunch.com.

Kickstarter is the most powerful crowdfunding platform for new and professional creators and creative entrepreneurs alike. To date, nearly $40 million dollars have been raised for comics and graphic novel projects on Kickstarter.

Still, more than half of all comic projects on Kickstarter fail.

ComixLaunch is trying to change that by revealing the mindset, strategies, and tactics you can use to successfully crowdfund your projects.

Founded by Tyler James and Jeremy Melloul, ComixLaunch will help take you through the entire process, from pre-launch strategies to designing and managing a successful campaign, all the way to avoiding the pitfalls of fulfillment.

I actually met Tyler through Jeremy, who I cold tweeted about being on their show. Jeremy liked the idea and we did a three-way chat on Comixlaunch, which was the most downloaded episode of their show for the first 49 episodes. You can listen to it here. You’ll have to forgive it a bit. I didn’t even know The Business of Art would exist yet. I was still pitching Kickstarter University as a thing. It wouldn’t go under for a few more months after this.

Over the past year, Tyler and I became friends and often encourage each other and discuss business, both publishing related and podcast related. It’s not hard to see why we hit it off. After all, how many publishers do you know that also have a podcast where they talk about the business side of creating things?

Not many.

So when he came to me with an idea to do a two-part episode, I was thrilled. I wanted to have him on my show forever and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. I spent the first half of the show being interviewed on Tyler’s podcast, and then we flipped it and I interviewed him on mine. Honestly, we ran out of steam a couple of times during this episode, but we got it together enough to deliver another banger for you.

We started out this episode talking about Tyler’s mentorship and courses. I do some of this myself, and so it was great to get in the weeds a bit about why coaching is so important. Basically, it helps you cut years off your journey, and years are precious.

Then, we talked about his history with Comixtribe. As you can see above, helping and giving back to the community has been a mission of Comixtribe since the beginning, and it’s clear that Tyler always wanted to build a community. We talked a bit about strategic planning, and he gave his thoughts on how you should think of strategic planning, how far out to plan, and how much of a plan to have when you do.

Once we finished up that, we talked about Comixlaunch. We talked about how he niched down to find a really core audience of people that needed information on how to launch a comics Kickstarter. Honestly, that is a really small niche but, as he said, once you have authority in one field it’s easier to parlay that into authority in another field. Even if he has to pivot in the future, he never loses his authority as a Kickstarter expert.

One thing I wanted to dive into was how he was able to open a successful kid’s book imprint for his company. I tried to do something similar this year and failed miserably. Yet his C is for Cthulhu brand is a massive success, even though he came from the world of very violent and dark comic books, just like me. His insights were eye-opening and fantastic. I really appreciate the detail he gave to his answer. It almost makes me want to try kid’s books again.

If you liked this episode, please head on over to iTunes and rate, review, and subscribe to both The Business of Art and Comixlaunch today. If you are coming from Comixlaunch, then you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @russellnohelty. If you want to find Tyler, he’s on Twitter @tylerjamescomic.

And if you love monsters, check out my new anthology comic, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, live on Kickstarter now. It's 30 different stories from amazing creators, and you can pick it up for just $40 INCLUDING SHIPPING! With your pledge you also get a free digital download of the cover AND the pdf/cbz files for all the books. Check it out today @ www.monsteranthologycomic.com.

Dirk Manning is a horror institution. He’s been touring around the Midwest for nearly a decade with his amazing horror anthology Nightmare World, and more recently his companion series Tales of Mr. Rhee. He one of the few guys I know that cons as much and as hard as me. He did 31 appearances last year to my 45, but he’s been doing it for a lot longer too, so that stamina is even more impressive. Here’s Dirk’s bio, straight from www.dirkmanning.com.

DIRK MANNING is best known as the writer/creator of comic series such as TALES OF MR. RHEE (Devil’s Due) and NIGHTMARE WORLD (Image Comics/Shadowline), as well as the author of the ongoing inspirational column/book collection WRITE OR WRONG: A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CREATING COMICS (Caliber/Bleeding Cool).

If you’ve heard of him, that’s probably why.

That being said, Dirk has also written stories for other comics too, including LOVE STORIES TO DIE FOR (Image Comics/Shadowline), Riley Rossmo’s DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, and THE LEGEND OF OZ: THE WICKED WEST (Big Dog Ink) among various other anthologies.

Dirk has also written several short films for the popular YouTube horror film series BLACKBOX TV, including “The Hunger,“ in which Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite plays the villain.

Dirk frequents the comic convention circuit, especially in the Midwestern section of the United States, and when not on the road he lives on the Internet and can be found online on Facebook, Twitterand Instagram@dirkmanning.

Cthulhu is his homeboy… and no, he doesn’t wear the scarf and top hat in real life.*

*When alone in his office writing, though? Every damn time.

The reasons I wanted to have Dirk on the show should be obvious: He loves monsters, he makes awesome anthology books, and he gives way more than he asks. He was one of the other teachers on Tyler James’s 6-Day Kickstarter challenge with me earlier this year as one example of his generosity.

The main reason I wanted him on, though, was to talk about anthologies. As you may know, I just launched a new Kickstarter a couple of days ago for my new anthology Monsters and Other Scary Shit: A monster anthology about monsters. It’s a 224-page anthology full of creators of all types jamming out about monsters. There’s cute monsters, scary monsters, sci-fi monsters, fantasy monsters, and more from creators who’ve worked on Star Wars, Transformers, Invader Zim, and more.

If you haven’t yet, check it out by clicking here. For just $40 you get the hardcover delivered to your door (in the US. Intl shipping charges apply), a digital print of the cover (trust me you’re gonna want it), and a pdf/cbz of the book. There are NO ADDITIONAL CHARGES (domestically).

I wanted to have them on to ask one specific question: How do you make an awesome anthology. I asked all of them to put together a list of their five best anthology tips. The first half of the show is the same BS banter you love, and it’s followed by five specific bullet points to help you plan a better anthology. Every episode we’ll recap the five tips here. Here are Dirk’s.

Select a theme.

Strive for artistic diversity.

Don’t have any filler story. Make sure every story is amazing.

Avoid overdone twist endings. They are for children.

Offer something uniquely you.

We discuss the tips in detail during the show, so I hope you tune in and learn something over the campaign to help you build an amazing campaign.

If you like this episode, go find dirk online @dirkmanning on Twitter and Instagram. If you dig the show, subscribe, rate, and review it today on iTunes by clicking here.

And don’t forget to check out our awesome monster anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, live on Kickstarter now, by clicking here.

Kirk McKnight took his love of baseball and turned it into a writer career, writing a book called The Voices of Baseball: The Game’s Greatest Broadcasters Reflect on America’s Past time, where the game’s broadcasters talked about the majesty of each individual ballpark. He followed it up with The Voices of Hockey: Broadcasters Reflect on the Fastest Game on Earth, both published by Rowman and Littlefield.

I’ve never had a non-fiction author in the show before, and it was incredibly interesting to see how his process is different than many of the fiction authors and comic creators I’ve talked to before. It was interesting to see how he started as a film and TV writer, and eventually molded himself into writing non-fiction books when that didn’t work out. I mean, who does that sounds like?

It’s me. It sounds like me. And I’m sure lots of you.

With my first non-fiction book dropping later this year, it was interesting to hear Kirk’s experience as an author living in the space I will soon inhabit, and getting his tricks and tips on marketing a non-fiction book was invaluable to me.

Even if right now you don’t think that you will ever write a non-fiction book, I still think there is tons of value in this episode. I found a lot of value in how his insights helped me imagine leveraging the brands of the artists for my anthology, and how his tenacity could help me land a publishing deal for a new book.

There are tons of insights to glean from this episode. I hope you enjoy. If you so, check out Kirk’s books by clicking here, of find him on Twitter @thevoicesofmlb.

If you love this show, please head to iTunes by clicking here to rate, review and subscribe today. Help the show and make sure you never miss another episode!

I met Dave Lukas on Twitter of all places. We followed each other and exchanged some DMs, and that led to emails, phone calls, and eventually being on each other’s podcast. This is another podcast exchange episode. I was on Dave’s podcast, The Misfit Entrepreneur (http://www.misfitentrepreneur.com) to talk about improving your sales game without feeling gross about it, and he came on my show to talk about how to get your mindset right so you can scale your business to the next level.

Here is his bio:

Dave M. Lukas is a serial entrepreneur, author, and investor. He is vice president and co-owner, at Grasp Technologies, has almost two decades of global business development and corporate leadership experience. Mr. Lukas brings his senior executive business acumen to a wide range of organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to small and mid-sized enterprises.

Mr. Lukas is the author of amazon best-seller “The Ten Year Career, The Fast Track to Retiring Young, Wealthy and Fulfilled.” The book is a culmination of 5 years of dedicated research into the mindset and habits of success, and leads the reader on a path to greater success and fulfillment. From teaching readers how to harness the true power of their mind’s capabilities, to the consistent habits and methods of the most successful, “The Ten Year Career” gives specific action steps required to achieve higher levels and sustain them. The uniqueness of the book is that everything Mr. Lukas teaches he painstaking executed in his own life for over 5 years, proving the viability of the methods and refining them before the book’s publishing.

At a very young age, he founded his first business and continued to develop successful businesses throughout his college years. It was this entrepreneurial spirit that catapulted him into a successful career path where he earned recognition as the top sales producer of a Fortune 500 company early on in his journey.

Prior to joining Grasp Technologies, Mr. Lukas was a sales leader at Paychex Inc., responsible for developing training programs to accelerate rookie sales reps’ early success companywide and as a turnaround manager for underperforming districts across the mid-west. As the owner of LCS Group, he has consulted with companies at all levels, from startups to multi-million dollar organizations, coaching senior executives, developing sales programs and platforms, in addition to offering training and general business consulting services.

In 2005, Mr. Lukas invested in Grasp Technologies, a leading SAAS and software development firm, providing business intelligence software, global data consolidation and solutions for data related issues and efficiencies. Mr. Lukas joined the company full time as Vice President and CSO in 2010. He is responsible for leading growth strategy, sales, marketing, and operations. Under his guidance Grasp has realized eight consecutive record-setting years of growth; over 50% growth annually, is now doing business in over 100 countries, and was recognized to the INC 5000 list of Fastest Growing Companies in 2015 and 2016.

Mr. Lukas is an accomplished investor in real estate and stock investing. He is a member of the Trading Concepts team, an investing education company, lending his expertise in its mentorship and training programs to students worldwide. As a compelling public speaker, Mr. Lukas has spoken extensively in front of a wide array of organizations, with an emphasis on teaching individuals the strategies to reach their true potential and deliver exponential results. He has been featured on radio, TV, and in many top trade publications, including Forbes Online. His latest venture is a podcast called the Misfit Entrepreneur.

It is a weekly podcast devoted to giving the audience incredibly useful and unique insight from the world’s top entrepreneurs with a focus on their non-traditional methods for achieving success, their Misfit side. Misfit was created to give the best, actionable advice to accelerate a listener’s success!

The show’s open format and Misfit 3 concept, combined with Dave’s intuitive and engaging interview style quickly uncovers each guest’s key tools, tactics, and tricks that listeners can start using in their lives right now. Released in August 2016, the show has already gotten many 5 star reviews and has had some of the top entrepreneurs in their fields from around the world as guests.

Mr. Lukas received his Bachelor of Arts in Business Management, Finance and Economics from Baldwin-Wallace University, and lives with his wife and daughter in Columbus, Ohio.

I usually cut some of the bio, but I put it all here to show you that Dave knows his stuff. He is a passionate businessman who brings creativity into his work. In fact, from the first question he spoke about his biggest passion is creative problem solving, and he shared several examples of that.

We talk about a lot in this show and cover many topics, but we focused on mindset at about the 30-minute mark. Mindset is such an incredibly important part of any business, and getting it right can help you with rejection, time management, productivity, and everything else. It’s really the foundation that a creative business is based.

I know in my own life, it was only when I learned how to get into the right mindset that my career took off and I felt like I had my life under control. So often, I hear creatives talk about rejection, or their inability to find work, or criticism, and I literally don’t deal with those issues because I’ve been able to build my mind into a steel trap. That’s not to say I don’t have haters or don’t get rejected all the time. It just means I don’t let it bother me.

I tell people all the time that if you don’t get your mindset right, then all the tactics in the world won’t help you. It’s why I start out by telling potential clients that if they aren’t willing to look at their art like a business then I’m not the right fit for them. My old talks used to be 80% tactics and 20% mindset, and they were very poorly attended. However, when I moved the needle to 80% about mindset and 20% about tactics people started seeing massive results immediately. That’s because when I gave them the tactics they were ready to implement them. That’s the power of mindset.

I know when I have business people come on to talk about their tactics they tend to be the least listened to episodes of the show, but I hope that’s not the case with Dave because he gave a step by step guide to improving your mindset that every single creative entrepreneur needs to hear.

If you love this show, please head on over to iTunes by clicking here to rate, subscribe, and review it today.

If you have to catch up on old episodes, we have a commercial free version of all the hard lessons, ranterludes, and Kickstarter mini-seasons from the first year of our show, available by clicking here. That’s 74 episodes and almost 9 hours of content, and you can get it all for just $20

Today on the show we have another crossover episode, and with it a new format; the Roundtable.

Man, new formats are kind of becoming our thing in the recent past, huh? We had Tyler James on to do a two-part episodes with his Comixlaunch show, and how we have on Martin Dunn to do a crossover with his show I Make Comics.

Martin is a comic creator who has been through the trenches as an artist, too. He’s written for IDW, Hashtag, and his own company CAE, and inked for both DC and Dark Horse books, among many others. Seriously, his Comic Vine resume is hefty. Here is the first part of his it, straight from Comic Vine.

Martin Dunn is a comic book Creator/Writer/Artist as well as a webcaster and Convention Panelist, from Tampa, Florida. He currently acts as Chief Creative Officer of CAE Studios. He has done work for CAE Studios, IDW Publishing, Hashtag Comics, Creature Entertainment and more. His body of work includes his creator-owned properties 'Joshua Black', 'Project: A.P.E.X.', '#IFightGhosts', and 'FETCH: An Odyssey'. as well as work on the Hashtag Comics series 'Carpe Noctem', and IDW Publishing's 'Star Mage' and 'White Chapel'.

This wasn’t much of an interview in the traditional sense, but that’s not to say that it wasn’t packed with value bombs. Martin has been around the block and back when it comes to making comics, and he’s definitely a lifer at this point. We talked a lot about what makes a lifer in this episodes, and it comes down to making it past that extinction point where others give up. If you can push through that pain and make it out the other side a whole new world of possibilities opens up to you.

This episode was more like a roundtable of two people who have been around the block talking about comics. It reminded me of a panel I did with Lee Kohse at Anime California about how to make it as an artist. There wasn’t a lot of structure, but there was a ton of value. Similarly, this episode didn’t have any real structure to it, and there really wasn’t a moderator. Instead, it was just two guys talking about cool stuff. We riffed off each other about making comics, conventions, and why you should always be nice to each other.

This is one of the longer episodes I’ve recorded recently, and it was nice not to be confined to the hour space I’ve been stuck with for the past year. I’m enjoying having a more free flowing experience to talk with people for longer or shorter than usual, but let’s be honest it’s always longer.

If you liked this episode, you should head on over to Martin’s website @ www.caestudios.com or find him on twitter @mdunn82. If you are new to this show, head on over to www.thebusinessofart.us to rate, review, and subscribe today. It’s the best way to make sure you don’t miss any of our awesome content. If you want to connect with me, I’m on twitter @russellnohelty.

James Haick is the publisher of Jamestown Publishing and creator of Solar Flare, a comic about a solar flare that destroys humanity’s way of life, that was successful on Kickstarter several times over the last few years.

I had James on the show because he’s starting a new company called Jamestown Publishing, which features an initial slate of four books including Walter Ostlie’s Shiver Bureau and Richard Rivera’s Stabbity Bunny, among others. His company is new, but his business sense and style are on point. I know Walter and Richard. Their work is synonymous with quality. In talking with James, it’s easy to see why they were convinced.

This dude in on POINT.

I always said the way to start a successful company that gets in with Diamond is to use Kickstarter as a proving ground, and James took it to another level. He layered convention success on top of Kickstarter to create a potent 1-2 punch. Since my two biggest revenue generators are Kickstarter and conventions, this sounds like a great way to build a foundationally successful company.

On top of that, Jamestown also will only publish books that have completed a full arc, or their entire run, whichever comes first. This is a caveat for publishing with Wannabe Press, so I’m all for this strategy. However, they are actually going into the direct market, which is something Wannabe Press has avoided like the plague.

This is one of my longest episodes ever at over 90 minutes long, but after talking with James for a while, it’s easy to be impressed with the future of his company. He seems to hit every note right when it comes to getting everything started on the right foot. There are no guarantees in this life, but I would say this is a high percentage risk.

This is a little bit of a weird episode because for most of it James was interviewing me and pelting me with questions. I don’t know he got the upper hand, but you should get a ton of value from what I deliver specifically about conventions. I hope I helped tweak James’s convention strategy to be more successful, and helped yours too.

I’m very candid in this interview b/c I kept thinking we would start the show and I would ask my intro question, but it never happened. This is like a 90 minute pre-interview which you get to listen in on. I know most of my episodes feel like a behind the scenes look at a creator’s brain, but I think this one even more so does that because I never thought we were recording.

I also have a completely free Kickstarter Toolkit I’ve put together to help you succeed in your own creative business. There’s no sign up required. Head on over to www.thebusinessofart.us/kickstartertoolkit to check that out today.

Maytal Gilboa is the founder and publisher of Emet Comics and Rosy Press. Since she just acquired Rosy Press, I wanted to have her on in order to discuss why she bought the press, along with her massively successful Kickstarter for Finding Molly. Besides that, she's a wealth of business knowledge. Here is the description of EMET comics, straight from their Wikipedia page.

Emet Comics is the independent comic book publishing division of Emet Entertainment, LLC, an American graphic novel publisher and entertainment company headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Emet Comics publishing line is focused on empowering female creators and storytellers in comics

Emet Comics was founded in 2015 by Maytal Gilboa an ex-animation executive who recognized a void in the comic book community when it came to content with a female point of view. During Emet Comics first two years, the company has enjoyed many successes. In their first year, the company’s title Zana by Jean Barker and Joey Granger, a fictional story about apartheid in a future South Africa, was nominated for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics.Also, in their first year, the company sold their title The Wendy Project by Melissa Jane Osborne and Veronica Fish, to Papercutz for English language distribution, and to Editoria Oceana for Spanish Language distribution.[4]

In November 2016, the company announced the purchase of Rosy Press, a romance comics publisher focused on diverse stories about love and relationships. Emet announced that they would be continuing Rosy Press's successful Fresh Romance series as both a webcomic and printed graphic novel series.

Maytal is a powerhouse in indie comics and one of the few people who loves the business side of things as much as me. It was incredible to listen to how Maytal has pivoted her business in the last year, and how she thinks of her books as marketing material. I love how she is going about moving into 2017, and what she plans to do with her company in the near future.

What was really interesting to me was the reasoning behind her purchase of Rosy Press. Rosy is a romance comic book company, and Maytal said she bought the company because she refused to let it die because it was too important.

For those of you that don’t know, Rosy Press’s publisher announced she was shuttering the company, and a few weeks later resurfaced to announce Emet Comics’s acquisition. It’s truly a fascinating story, and one I enjoyed hearing immensely. It’s actually a great case study in how to acquire a company.

Throughout the interview, Maytal talked in detail about her exact marketing plan, along with how she repackaged many of her books for more success. She talked about what she will and won’t be bringing back to her next Kickstarter, and the struggles with having too many rewards.

If you like this episode, head on over to iTunes to rate, review, and subscribe today and if you are getting ready to launch your own Kickstarter, head on over to my Kickstarter Toolkit to find everything I’ve ever written about the subject by clicking here.

This week on the show we have Tim Powers, Philip K. Dick award-winning science fiction and fantasy author of Dinner at Deviant’s Palace and On Stranger Tides. I met Tim at Loscon and he made an offhand comment about how nobody should ever self-publish their book. I asked him to come on the show and make his case, and he agreed! This is his bio, straight from Wikipedia:

Most of Powers' novels are "secret histories". He uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily influence the motivations and actions of the characters.

Typically, Powers strictly adheres to established historical facts. He reads extensively on a given subject, and the plot develops as he notes inconsistencies, gaps and curious data; regarding his 2000 novel Declare, he stated,[2]

"I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar – and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all."

Tim has been a published writer for a long time, and I really enjoyed his perspective on writing. Even though I don’t agree that there is never a reason to self-publish. He laid out his case very well for why somebody should look for a publisher, and even how to do it. I really enjoyed toward the end of the interview when he went through the step by step process for how to get a book published. It was a brilliant strategy, and even though he’s not a marketing person he clearly has some marketing in him because it’s genius in its simplicity.

I also really liked what he said about how to find an agent. Yes, he went through the exact process you should use to find an agent toward the end of the interview and it was great. There is a secret piece of the puzzle you need before getting an agent interested, and the way he talks about it is just fantastic.

The four publishers he talked about in this interview that accept unsolicited manuscripts are Tor, Daw, Baen, and Ace. I know I’m going to look into them and if you have a qualifying book then you should too.

If you liked this episode, please head on over to Tim’s Facebook page and website to say thanks. If you like the show, please head on over to iTunes. Rate, review, and subscribe today.

If you want to check out my Kickstarter Toolkit, the free resource I designed to help you launch your own project, filled with everything I’ve ever said about Kickstarter on my blog and podcast, click here.

This week on the show, we’re back at Palm Springs Comic Con for one of my favorite panels I’ve ever moderated, because I interviewed a living legend. Two living legends in fact. I was honored to moderate The Man who Created Halloween panel with Irwin Yablans, legendary producer of the film, and Shelly Saltman, who didn’t make Halloween but did help market the Birds and is a TV legend in his own right.

When Yablans was younger he realized he wanted to work in the movie industry by looking in one of the drive-in movie theater trash and found pieces of cut out scenes.

Halloween began as an idea suggested by Yablans (entitled The Babysitter Murders), who envisioned a film about babysitters being menaced by a stalker. Carpenter took the idea and another suggestion from Yablans that it take place during Halloween and developed them into a story. Along with noted film producer and financierMoustapha Akkad, Yablans put forward $300,000 for the film's production, filming in Pasadena, California over the course of 20 days. Released in late October 1978, the film was an unprecedented success, making $70 million in its initial theatrical run, becoming the highest grossing independent film of all time until it was surpassed The Blair Witch Project, released twenty years later. Yablans and Akkad remained as executive producers after the film's sequel rights were sold to Dino De Laurentiis, the latter producing every entry in the series until his death in 2005. Yablans and Akkad, along with producer Joseph Wolf, founded the independent production and distribution studio Compass International Pictures (later Trancas International Films Ltd.)

Sheldon "Shelly" Arthur Saltman (born August 17, 1931 in Boston) is a promoter of major sports and entertainment events including the worldwide promotion of the Muhammad Ali / Joe Frazier heavyweight championship boxing matches, creating the Andy Williams San Diego Golf Classic, helping to arrange the independent NFL Players Association games during the 1982 NFL season Strike, and bringing cellular phone technology to the former Soviet Union. But in the eyes of the general public, he is perhaps best known as the man that Evel Knievel tried to beat to death with a baseball bat.

Shelly has created, written, and produced shows for television such as Pro-Fan, Challenge of the NFL Cheerleaders (an early "reality" show), and the movie Ring of Passion about the fights between American boxer Joe Louis and German champion Max Schmeling in the years leading up to World War II. Shelly is also the author of various books including EVEL KNIEVEL ON TOUR by Sheldon Saltman with Maury Green (1977 / Dell Publishing) and FEAR NO EVEL: An Insider's Look At Hollywood as told to Thomas Lyons by Shelly Saltman (January 2007 / We Publish Books).

If you are interested in listening just to Shelly, he stays pretty silent until the last 15 minutes of the episode. So if you want his opinion on why he’s terrified of ravens, what it was like going town to town promoting the Birds, or how he created Sports Goofy, then fast forward to the last 15, but I highly recommend starting at the beginning, because this is mostly about how Irwin created Halloween, filled with tons of awesome stories. Some you might know, like whose mask they used for Michael Myer’s character, and other you might not, like how they came to cast Jamie Lee Curtis in her breakthrough role.

It’s not often in your life you get to share the stage with a living legend, and I don’t take it for granted. It was amazing hearing Irwin talk not just about Halloween, but how he helped invent independent movies, how movies have changed over the years, why he can’t watch horror movies now, and his #1 secret for success.

Irwin and Shelly are far and away the two most successful individual people we’ve ever had on the show, and talking with them was a delight. I tried to soak up the information they gave like a sponge, and hope you will too. There is nothing like hearing how somebody sustained a career in a creative field. It gives you insights on how to build your own career and shows you a path in the darkness.

Irwin also has a book, The Man who Created Halloween, which is his biography. It’s full of amazing anecdotes about how he came up inside the business, what he had to do to succeed, and how he built a career for himself. I was riveted to every page and highly recommend you checking it out by clicking here. Your copy won’t be signed like mine, but it will be filled with the same awesome knowledge.

Shelly also has an amazing book called Fear No Evel: An Insiders Look at Hollywood, where he talks about promoting the legendary Ali/Frazier fights and playing tennis with Boris Yeltsin, along with the time Evel Knievel attacked him with a baseball bat. Check that one out by clicking here. It’s soon to be a major motion picture.

When there is knowledge to soak up, I’m there, and both Shelly and Irwin dropped knowledge throughout. I truly enjoyed this conversation and hope you do as well. Interesting tidbit, my first management company was Trancas International, who co-produced Halloween with Irwin. Small world.

If you do, please head on over to iTunes to rate, review, and subscribe today. And if you are looking to catch up on past episode, there is no better way than through our commercial free course that captures all the Hard Lessons, Ranterludes, and Kickstarter mini-seasons from our first 100 episodes. That’s over 74 episodes and almost 9 hours of content which you can find by clicking here.

When I started setting real, tangible SMART goals in 2015, my career saw hockey stick, exponential growth. Before then, I had a set of goals that I wanted to attain, but they were usually either too easy or impossibly hard to achieve. Most importantly, there was no way to measure success so I usually abandoned my goals before too long.

Now that I use SMART goals to set realistic expectations, I’ve been able to hit almost all of my goals in the past two years.

So what are SMART goals? SMART is an acronym for goals that are:

S-SPECIFIC

M-MEASURABLE

A-ATTAINABLE

R-REALISTIC

T-TIME BOUND

Before I tell you my goals, let’s talk about each part of a SMART goal and explain why they are so important in determining your success. For this example, let’s assume your goal is to finish the first draft of a novel in 2017. We’ll take each part of the SMART goal separately and break out why it’s so important to make that goal happen.

S- SPECIFIC

Most people don’t put much thought into creating their goals. Their goals might be as simple as I want to write more in 2017. This is a big problem, because MORE is not very specific when it comes to goal setting. If you have no data from 2016, you have no idea what MORE means or how you can accomplish writing more in 2017, nor can you motivate yourself to just write MORE.

However, if your goal is “I want to finish the first draft of a 70,000-word novel in 2017” that is a very specific goal. You can always look back at this goal and see whether you are moving toward or away from it.

M- MEASUREABLE

The second part of a SMART goal is that the goal is measurable. We talked about this above, but as my friend Tyler James says, “what you measure you can manage”. I would add to that by saying what you manage you can attain. Going back to our example above, you can measure the goal of completing a 70,000-word novel.

That is a very measurable goal. You can make a plan for each step of the goal and know exactly how much you need to get done each month, each week, and each day to stay on track to accomplish your goal.

A- ATTAINABLE

The third part of a SMART goal is that it is attainable. For me, this is the most important part of making a SMART goal because if something isn’t attainable you become discouraged and give up on it. So let’s take our original goal. Is it possible to finish a 70,000-word novel in a year? Well of course. Many people have achieved this goal before. Maybe writers compete in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, which is a month dedicated to writing the first draft of a 55,000-word novel. So yes, finishing a 70,000-word novel is a very attainable goal. However, writing a 200,000-word novel might not be in the realm of possibility for your goal. That’s why it’s so important to make sure these goals are attainable.

R- REALISTIC

The fourth part of a SMART goal is that it’s realistic for you to achieve. While attainable deals with whether the goal is possible, realistic deals with whether you can accomplish your goal. What is realistic for you might not be realistic for somebody else. If my goal was to run a 100-mile ultramarathon this year, that would be unrealistic for me because I can’t even run 1 mile without getting winded. However, running a half marathon might be a good goal, depending on my fitness level. That doesn’t mean I won’t make running one of my goals for the year. It just means that I need to be realistic with my goal based on what I can achieve.

Going back to our goal, writing a 70,000-word novel is something most people can achieve in a year, as it is less than 200 words a day, or about the size of a long Facebook post.

T- TIME BOUND

The final part of a SMART goal is that it’s time bound. If you want to write a 70,000-word novel eventually, that isn’t something that can be measured. However, if you set a goal of one year to do it, then you can work toward that goal.

Does our goal fit?

Let’s analyze our own goal and see if it’s a SMART goal.

Is finishing the first draft of a 70,000-word novel in 2017 a specific goal? I would say so.

Is it a measureable goal? For sure.

Is it an attainable goal and a realistic goal? Yes and yes. Many people have done it in the past which means you can too.

Is it a time bound goal? Again that’s a yes because we’ve given ourselves a year to accomplish it.

Therefore, it is a SMART goal, and much easier to measure and manage than the standard “I want to write MORE next year” that becomes the goal of so many writers.

A SMART goal can be used for anything, though. You can use it to lose weight (I want to lose 25 pounds this year by going to the GYM three times a week and only eating one piece of candy a week), or you can use it to establish a money goal (I want to save $300/mo by removing alcohol and eating out from my budget). SMART goals can be used to accomplish any task.

What are my SMART goals?

Now that we’ve talked about SMART goals in a general sense, it’s time to give you my goals for 2017. This is more for me than it is for you, honestly, because I want to be accountable for accomplishing my goals. I also want you to tell me if you think these goals are SMART or not.

Goal #1: Launch four new titles in 2017

My first goal for this year is to publish four projects in 2017. They are my first anthology Monsters and Other Very Scary Shit, my first non-fiction book Sell Your Soul: How to Build your Creative Brand, my fifth novel The Vessel, and the second graphic novel that I drew, How Not to Invade Earth.

This past year I published Katrina Hates the Dead, Gherkin Boy and the Dollar of Destiny, I Can’t Stop Tooting: A Love Story, My Father Didn’t Kill Himself, and Spaceship Broken, Needs Repairs.

That was five books in 2016, so I know that setting a publishing goal of four books is attainable and realistic. However, my additional goal is to do a much better job with each launch that I did last year, where I often didn’t give each launch the justice it deserves, especially online, which goes to my next goal.

Goal #2: Receive 100 new 5-Star Amazon reviews for our books

My second goal is to exponentially increase the amount of Amazon 5-star reviews our books receive. I completely ignored/abandoned Amazon this year to my detriment. Our online sales are abysmal and online sales are essential to the growth of Wannabe Press.

We sell a lot of books at shows, and our goal is to transition those sales more online in the coming years. One way we do that is to set a goal to increase the reviews of our books. One of the reasons we flounder online is because we have very few reviews, especially compared to how many people buy our books. In 2017, I am committed to getting our books a total of 100 new reviews from fans of my work so that our online sales can rise to the level of our convention and Kickstarter sales.

Goal #3: Sell 3,000 total book units with an average sale price of $26.50

My third goal is to increase the total number of book units sold by Wannabe Press. Three thousand might not seem like that many units to set as a goal, but for us it would be game changing. This year, we sold over 2,000 book units across 10 titles with a minimum sale of $10 and an average sale of $16.50.

My goal for the next year is to increase the number of units sold to 3,000 and increase the average sale to $26.50. The reason I don’t want to go higher than 3,000 units is because all of our books coming out this coming year have a minimum price of $20, and I would like to get our average sale price up to $26.50, which is $10.00 higher than it was this year. If we can accomplish those two things, our revenue will more than double.

Goal #4: Increase our total mailing lists to over 10,000 people with a 20% open rate

My fourth goal for the year is to increase our mailing list exponentially. Currently, our mailing lists have a total subscriber base of 7,500 people across 10 different lists. My goal is to increase that to over 10,000 people and increase our open rate from 13% to 20%. Twenty percent is a lofty goal, but I think it is attainable if with the new changes I’ve recently made to my mailing list.

Goal #5: Increase online sales to $2,000 a month, equivalent with convention and in person sales from 2016.

My fifth goal is to increase online sales in 2017 so they are equivalent with convention sales from 2016. I cannot keep attending 40+ shows a year forever, and the only way to make sure I can cut back my convention schedule is to make a goal to increase online sales.

Right now, I make roughly six sales a month online, with a total revenue of $18. This is going to take a lot of work and is my biggest mission in 2017. Once this goal is achieved then I believe my business will be completely sustainable. These sales can include courses and books, along with live seminars.

So what do you think? Are those SMART goals? Are they specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound? I certainly think so, but let me know by leaving a comment.

If you love this show, please head on over to iTunes by clicking here to rate, review, and subscribe to the show today. It’s the best way to make sure you don’t miss any of our awesome content.

And if you want to catch up on all of our great content from the past year so you can have your best 2017, click here to get a commercial free version of all our hard lessons, ranterludes, and miniseasons from our first hundred episodes. That’s 70+ episodes and almost 9 hours of content, all for just $20. Just click here.

Happy New Year everybody! May 2017 be the year you break through to the next level!

Hillery Pastovich has been selling and marketing comics for publishers since 2005, most notably for Tokyo Pop and now for Humanoids. Along the way she’s figured out how to sell not only to people at shows but also at libraries and directly to stores as well. In fact, her knowledge about selling to libraries and stores is what brought her on the show today. If you don’t know Humanoids, here’s a bio from their website (http://www.humanoids.com):

From its beginnings, Humanoids has embodied creative innovation, a fiercely independent spirit, and a drive to break new ground.

Under the French name Les Humanoïdes Associés, the publishing house began in the turbulent period of the early 1970s in Paris, which—like San Francisco and New York—was alive with the spirit of artistic revolution. As young people were debating ideas in unprecedented ways, three young men—graphic novel artists Jean Giraud (known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet, along with writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet—were determined to push the limits of their art and of the medium as a whole. They joined forces to create a comics magazine like none before: Métal Hurlant (French for "Screaming Metal").

From its first issue in January 1975, Métal Hurlant showed how comics could be created and presented in groundbreaking ways. The magazine combined with its book publishing counterpart quickly achieved a reputation as a company run by creative people for the sake of creating and exploring sequential art in unprecedented ways.

The magazine achieved such worldwide acclaim that National Lampoon launched a U.S. version, Heavy Metal. It initially published Druillet, Mœbius and other European creators in English translations, exposing American audiences to a whole new side of comics.

Soon Humanoids attracted the attention of creative luminaries outside the comics world as well, such as filmmakers Federico Fellini and Ridley Scott, and Humanoids' vision evolved beyond selling books.

In 1988, Swiss entrepreneur Fabrice Giger purchased Humanoids from European media giant Hachette. Besides fostering talent, Giger's goal was to implement a unique creative approach that emphasized international collaboration. Over the years, Humanoids has achieved and maintained that mandate. It has become completely international in its thinking and creative process, with artists, writers, and staff in multiple countries working jointly to create art and stories with global appeal.

Humanoids has published thousands of original titles, with third-party publishers translating many of them into numerous languages. Some, such as The Incal, have achieved stellar performances worldwide and sold millions of copies.

Since 1998 Humanoids has been the only publishing house of European origin with a direct presence in the U.S., and since 2014 the only non-Japanese company publishing its graphic novels directly in Japan, under the brand ユマノイド ("Humanoido").

Known for creating beautiful books, Humanoids has also embraced the digital age from its inception. Its catalogs are available on platforms worldwide, including on its own iTunes apps.

Books were long considered Humanoids' primary focus, but never destined to be its end products. Part of the company's plan was to adapt the source material from Humanoids' vast IP library for other mediums, such as movies—when the time was right. The company wanted to be in an optimum position to select the best partners and have a hands-on approach to all aspects of the filmmaking activity. Fabrice Giger has been waiting for the opportune moment to strike and bring Humanoids' unique touch to this highly competitive field.

While retaining its Paris office, Humanoids made its American branch the headquarters of the group in 2013.

In 2015, it forged major audiovisual development deals with various international and Los Angeles-based partners, leading to the creation of the Humanoids production division.

As Variety put it in its May 15, 2015 edition, "Marvel Comics changed the face of Hollywood. Can legendary Paris–L.A. graphic novel publisher Humanoids do the same thing...?" Whether or not it sets the bar that high, Humanoids is certainly poised to keep rolling out quality and innovative titles, and to do the exact same with the other mediums it chooses to explore.

I had a really good time on this episode talking about selling comics. Granted, Hillery is mostly focused on distributing comics to retailers and libraries instead of hand selling at conventions, but that’s what made this interview great because she talked specifically about selling books on a way larger scale than I have ever thought about before.

I dug how she went deep into the sales process of getting your book ready for retail, and how to go through the whole process of selling and marketing your book for all sorts of markets. She also went into her history in sales, and how she got over the idea that sales is gross.

We went a little off the sales at the end there and discussed the general ethos of the Business of Art, and the big reason why so many creatives fail, and to me that’s where the interview got really interesting, because you are seeing somebody on the other side discussing all the things that make creatives succeed and fail.

If you like this one, make sure to reach out to Hillery online, and find Humanoids at http://www.humanoids.com to check out their books.

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